World Cup 2006
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Harry Harris - Chief Football Writer - The Express
Can England do it This Time?
The omens are good
Since losing to Northern Ireland in Belfast on 7 September and facing the backlash that followed, beating Argentina in Geneva answered the question of whether the team could compete with heavyweight opposition.
While Eriksson took a huge amount of media criticism at the start of the season as his team spluttered in the friendly with Denmark and then lost to Northern Ireland after a less than impressive display against Wales, at least the England manager led the country to Germany. And that has not always been the case of some of his predessessors. England failed to do so under Sir Alf Ramsey in 1974 and missed out again in 1978 (Ron Greenwood) and 1994 (Graham Taylor).
Eriksson's latest group has been dubbed the ‘golden generation', but they didn't look like it until they mattered Poland to top the group.
When the Football Association grasped the nettle and recruited their first foreign coach in November 2000, they had a five-year plan, designed to win the World Cup in 2006. There must be a chance with the talents of John Terry, Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand, David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen.
To those eight add Gary Neville and Ashley Cole, probably the best pair of full-backs in international football, and it should not be as unreasonable as recent results might suggest to give England a decent chance of coming away from Berlin as champions. The doubts are not down to the quality of the players available as much as Eriksson's questionable ability to bring the best out of them. It is in that all-important respect that.
It is beyond dispute that England ought to have done better at the last World Cup, when Eriksson took the brunt of the medias criticism, standing accused by them of an inability to galvanise his players at half-time in Shizuoka. The media suggested Eriksson's failure was as much to blame for the defeat by Brazil as David Seaman's misjudgment of Ronaldinho's free kick. Two years later, at Euro 2004, England's first foreign coach again saw his team eliminated at the quarter-final stage in a competition won by Greece.
Eriksson pinned his faith in some promising and outstanding young players, and while it is a no-brainer that Wayne Rooney will be one of the best young stars of this World Cup, history shows there is always at least one fresh-faced player for an England squad at a major tournament.
At the last World Cup in 2002, 21-year-old Darius Vassell was the unforeseen interloper. His debut against Holland, only four months before England kicked off in the finals, featured an audacious goal from an overhead kick that was impressive enough to push him to the forefront of Eriksson¹s thinking. Rooney was the breakthrough player in the run-up to Euro 2004. At the 1998 World Cup in France, it was 18-year-old Owen who won his first cap just four months before the tournament. At Euro 96, 21-year-old Gary Neville was Terry Venables' wing-back, even though a year earlier he had still to nail down a place in the Manchester United team.
Related Links
Harry Harris archive
- 1. Harry Harris writes for ntlworld
- 2. Can England do it This Time?
- 3. There's only one Metatarsal
- 4. England best for talent
- 5. Bags packed, fingers crossed
- 6. Thrills, spills and intrigue
- 7. Prawn sarnies, cap controversy and Swedish sentiment
- 8. Swedish endurance in Soho
- 9. Scolari has some explaining to do
- 10. Give Rooney the armband
- 11. A triumph for Germany