Who is to blame for England's dismal World Cup showing?

[PorkChop]

Even though the England national team are nowhere near as good as some people like to believe, England should have qualified from their group. Italy had won one game out of their last eight internationals (their last win came in September 2013), Uruguay had a 75% fit Luis Suarez and not much else, and Costa Rica simply aren't as good as England are. England should be qualifying from this group.

However, England find themselves unceremoniously dumped from the competition, at the bottom of the table and without a win - their only hope of qualifying was rather embarrassingly relying on other results, which wound up not going in their favour.

The excuses have started already from the media - several pundits have cited the temperature in Brazil and how England aren't accustomed to such heat and humility, and others are citing that a number of England's players didn't play in the Champions League this season, and "...to be the best, you have to compete with the best". This is clear bullshit though, as I didn't see too many representatives from Chile and Costa Rica in the Champions League this year, yet they've already qualified for the knockout stages. Both these countries have far, far worse international teams than England, and had to face competition much more skilled and experienced than they are - yet they managed to pull off two wins each. A large percentage of Spain's team competed in the Champions League this year, but like England, they've been sent home already. Clearly the Champions League excuse holds no weight, and sounds more like damage control than anything else - which is strange, as it initially came from a Scotsman.

Who or what is to blame for England's embarrassing World Cup?

[Daz]

Same problem that there seems to be every tournament. Lack of passion. England teams never play with a belief that they can win. It seems a chore to most of them even being there. Look at Chile, singing their national anthem, the people and the players. It was like they were going to fucking war, and it made me want to support them during the game because of it. We don't have that type of passion, not anymore. Players like Rooney, who is supposedly world class, spends most of his time complaining and making excuses for why he didn't perform up to standard.

Also, just a complete rigid structure and tactical approach to the whole thing. We took a lot of youth this year, which excited a lot of people. And yet we persisted with the same ol same ol. It's been the same for years. Rooney can underperform all he wants because he knows no England manager will have the balls to drop him, cause at least on paper, he is the biggest star we have. We'll even play him out of position and keep him on the pitch despite having a horrible game to accommodate him. Then there are players like Welbeck who are picked not on their form for their club, but because of which club they play for.

[Camstud]

Even though the England national team are nowhere near as good as some people like to believe, England should have qualified from their group.

I think this is the problem. You acknowledge that there's many people who believe England are better than they are, but then with your next comment become one of those people.

I don't think England should have qualified, but I believe we very much could have qualified. There wasn't a lot in it at all. Italy, one moment of brilliance from Pirlo and then one slack bit of defending from Baines and Cahill I think it was. We were every bit as good as them though.

As far as the Uruguay game is concerned for starters they should've been down to 10 men after twenty minutes, Godin's foul was the most blatant second yellow ever but the ref bottled it. Then the second goal was a piece of stupidity from Gerrard and piss-poor defending from our [already widely-known] poor CBs. Once we scored there only looked like one winner, us, but we got caught by a quality player twice. A quality player that England just don't have which comes back to my first comment -- There's no reason why we should have qualified. We got beat by two teams ranked higher than us yet held our own. Admittedly FIFA rankings are bullshit but Uruguay won their last major tourney (Copa America 2011 I think) and Italy were in the final of Euro 2012 having beaten us (in a match in which we didn't look nearly as strong as we did this tourney).

It was decided by a couple of small factors, which is unfortunately the case in tournament football.

I don't think it's a case of who to blame but a combination of small details which can cost you in such high stakes games. In this scenario it's best to look at the positives and build on them such as young players got some experience, Rooney played well (IMO, and I normally criticise him the most), and we outperformed two decent teams, even if we didn't get the result. Obviously things need to change such as a clear-out of a few players, developing our youngsters, and finding out how to break down teams better and take advantage of when we are on top in the match.

I don't think it's a case of blaming anyone in particular though, we knew this was a transitional tournament and we also got drawn into a tough group which hasn't helped. Costa Rica deserved to win both of those games, they weren't lucky. We have been drawn with three tough teams who can all play football and dig out results. It was always going to be very tough for England and in no way should it have been expected that we will 100% go through.

[PorkChop]

@Camstud - I absolutely believe England should have qualified from this group, even though I don't think they're as good as many people think. I despised people in 2006 and 2010 who kept saying "this is our year" and genuinely thought England could go all the way - it was never going to happen. That being said, anything less than qualification from the group stage in this World Cup was always going to be an embarrassment. In terms of strength in depth, I genuinely think the England team is stronger than all other teams in the group, and so there's absolutely no excuses for not qualifying - yet alone probably finishing at the bottom of the table.

I agree that Suarez is a quality player, I think he's world class - but he was 75% fit. He had knee surgery a month before the game. There's no getting around that fact. The rest of the Uruguay team is remarkably average, yet they bested England. Regardless of whether they should've had a Godin sent off, England should be beating them even with 11 players on the pitch - especially when their best player is nowhere near fully fit.

I also don't think you can use the FIFA rankings as part of your argument then discredit them in the next sentence, and I don't think you can call it a 'tough group' when you admit England outperformed their opponents in each game. I don't think it was a tough group for England at all. It's a tough group for Costa Rica, but not England. Cameroon had a tough group, against Brazil, Mexico and Croatia. Chile had a tough group against the Netherlands, Spain and Australia (but have still managed to qualify). USA had a tough group against Germany, Portugal and Ghana.

England didn't even have to finish first in the group, second would suffice. A second placed finish in a group of Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica should be pretty simple for England, considering the players they have. But nope - not one point. That's embarrassing, and I really couldn't disagree more that the only things that went wrong were a few small details - I think everything went wrong.

@Daz - Harry Redknapp was on the radio today also talking about the lack of passion from players. He said when he was at Spurs, he'd consistently have 2-3 players picked in the England team. These same players, he said, would show up in his office shortly after hearing the news, saying "get me out of that game, I don't want to play". It's such a contrast between England and some other teams in this tournament, some of them are so grateful to be there, teary-eyed with pride when singing the national anthem, whilst England look like they're at a funeral.

*******

I think England are a World Cup quarter final team. We can't hang with the Germanys and Brazils of this world, but we should certainly be finishing in the top two places in a group of Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica. Also, despite being friendlies, we should also be disposing of teams like a 10-man Honduras, Ecuador, Algeria (who we drew 0-0 with a while back) and all the countless other teams we've had bad results against. There's no excusing that fact. Something needs to be done.

[War Daddy]

Was Tony Romo anywhere near the game?

[xgamr]

From my point of view. It seems like the defense was bad and the strikers underperformed but the younger ones can play well. Change wise in wouldn't know

[AkydefGoldberg]

England should have got out of the group had they shown a more pragmatic nous in the first two games.

Against Italy, it was poor defending that allowed their second goal and a lack of leadership (on and off the pitch) to see that Candreva was tapping Baines regularly and latter was struggling. Gerrard as captain should have seen that and ordered Rooney to come back deep and help but as Linekar has said on his piece for Blahzil that Stevie G is an off the cuff sort of player so can't see the danger that's happening. Terry would have been more organisational but that's irrelevant as he didn't want to return.

Uruguay match again, small issues. Went gung ho when they should have looked to have defensive stability, get a draw and look to the final game to win.

On paper it's easy to say they should have gone through but playing in Brazilian conditions, besides Chile I've seen handle them well, against Uruguay England looked leggy.

Hodgson in hindsight should have gone three in midfield (maybe Milner alongside Gerrard and Wilshere) and shoved Rooney to the left but now it seems latter could nab the armband when really he's not delivered.

[PorkChop]

Steven Gerrard has asked Harry Redknapp to name those Spurs players who didn't want to play for England.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... CMP=twt_gu

[AkydefGoldberg]

Harry Redknapp is a fucking prick.

Throws a hand grenade out which pretty much puts the spotlight on every English player he had at Tottenham, when asked to name names, he cries off. And he wonders why he didn't get the England job. Knob.

[Tom]

There are multiple problems.

First of all, lets focus on the tournament itself.

I think Roy Hodgson is a problem. I think he limits England and doesn't have faith in picking England's best eleven. He is too defensive minded. His choice to start Welbeck over the likes of Lallana shows this as well, his reasoning being that Welbeck is a better retriever of the ball. While that may be the case, having someone like Welbeck starting in that line up totally takes away the balance from the side that having two attacking minded players like Sterling and Lallana would have brought to the table. I don't think Hodgson is the guy to get the best out of the players we have.

Secondly, although this is not entirely Hodgson's fault, the players were not installed with confidence and belief to play for their country. When watching England, it was clear that they played with fear as opposed to confidence. This was ever apparent against Uruguay. When England equalised, for five minutes we looked like we would go on and win the game. However, as soon as Uruguay got an opportunity on goal, they became cautious and the confidence seemed to drop immediately. There was a lot of talk about having a psychologist help England improve their penalty kicks. The reality is, the reason England have problems with penalties is down to confidence, and it was clearly obvious that these problems existed beyond penalty kicks. Sports psychologists could have worked with the players to a much broader scale than fixing their penalty kicks.

England may have had lots of possession during the competition. However they were not purposeful with it a lot of the time and did not move quickly up the pitch at all. That itself is a problem.

Teams like USA, Chile, Costa Rica etc are perfect examples of teams who we have seen that once you are installed with confidence, have a confident approach, move the ball quickly up the pitch and are well organised then you will pull off good performances and exceed peoples expectations.

The media also doesn't help. I don't think I need to elaborate on that.

Lastly, and this is not in relation to the tournament, there seems to be a huge problem with England nurturing creative players. That is a problem at youth level, where players who have the typical build of an England player (Lampard, Gerrard etc) are getting through yet many creative players who probably don't play the typical English way are not. That is not saying that having players like Lampard and Gerrard is not beneficial but we also need players that are going to move the ball quickly, pick out holes in the defence, dictate the play etc. Players in the youth that have these traits need to be monitored, nurtured and encouraged to be themselves and not be forced to play the typical English way. I don't think this problem will help solve the issues in terms of confidence, getting the right system in place, the media etc though.

Overall, England would more than likely have got out of that group if they had a manager that installed confidence in them and if they had a system which the players could relate to and allow them to be themselves. Uruguay are not a quality side, England are much better than them. In fact, I would be inclined to say that Suarez beat England 2-1. However, the reason England didn't beat Uruguay was because the system was wrong and because the players didn't seem to be playing with much confidence and freedom in my opinion!

[prophet]

I'd planned to post an essay on this but most of my thoughts have already been posted above so instead I'll offer another point of blame.

The real problem, at least in my opinion, isn't the major tournaments themselves but rather the two years in-between. I was listening to Stuart Pearce the other day and he pointed out that five years ago our U21's played the German U21's in the U21 European Championships. When Germany played Portugal the other day 6 of those U21's from five years ago played in the game - compare that with England...where only James Milner and Joe Hart have made the progression up to the senior team and the former doesn't even make the first team. Same goes for the Olympics...a ton of the younger players that should have been thrilled to play for Team GB at a home games opted to sit it out for a few more weeks rest before pre-season began.

Last summer there was an U21 tournament where 17 of our young players were prevented from playing by their respective clubs, the FA, Hodgson or some other method and it isn't good enough. You look at the Brazilians, the Germans, the Spanish...all teams that have achieved great success and played wonderful football within the last decade and what do they all have in common? They develop young talent the right way and have them playing together, internationally, at a young age so that when they finally come of age they're not daunted and they're all comfortable playing with each other. That chemistry allows them to play confident, free-flowing attacking football.

It's a flaw within the English game that these young players think they're the fucking bollocks when they're 19 because they're starting to make a name for themselves. Foreign countries demand discipline and humility within the youth ranks to keep them grounded and keep them progressing. Here there's no such system and the youth talents are allowed to keep going around thinking they're the shit. Look at the better players from this years World Cup (Robben, Neymar, Messi, Sanchez...) all of whom cut their teeth at youth level before they broke through whereas in England there's no such thing.

Another flaw is the public and how they literally don't give a fuck until a major tournament rolls around and even then they're only invested so they can laugh at how bad we are and arrogantly claim that they 'told you so' when we get knocked out. During qualifying the majority of the public couldn't care less, if England are playing on a Friday night most people are just bummed there's no Premier League that weekend rather than excited that England are playing. Again compare that attitude with that of other countries who can't wait for an International game so they can come together as a country and support the team. Here for the most part 90% of England despises 90% of the England team for 90% of the year - other countries despise other teams...but don't openly mock and ridicule fellow countryman the way we do in this country.

On a more short term basis I agree that Hodgson is a problem. He's not a good man-manager, motivator and he's not a leader of men and doesn't inspire any confidence in his players of the public. He's merely an old tactician that isn't up to the task as he proved this summer. Sure we were never going to win the tournament, nobody expected us too...but to not even get out of the group is shocking. I'm sick of hearing about how it could be argued that we deserved to beat Italy - that might be true, we might have deserved to beat Italy...but we didn't. There was room for optimism ahead of the Uruguay game in which 99.9% of the build-up was on stopping Luis Suarez and despite that we still couldn't stop him.

If you're going to go to a tournament like this that you're realistically not going to win surely the prerogative should be on looking towards the future and building a team that can challenge for Euro 2016 in France? I firmly believe he should have properly blooded the young lads in Brazil - start Barkley, start Lallana, start Shaw...give them that essential experience in a major tournament so that when the next one comes around they'll be equipped to handle the pressure. Instead Hodgson stuck to his defensive 'as long as we don't lose' guns and we went out with a wimper. In fairness to him though he did do what I wanted with Sterling, so there's that.

As for now I'd honestly fire off all the older lads (Gerrard included) and rely completely on the youth. The only way they're going to get better as a team is if we keep playing them until they get it right. Sturridge, Sterling, Chamberlain, Henderson, Shaw etc are all good enough to lead the country and should we get to France in 2016 and the youth operation fails well then at least we went down swinging and at least we gave it a try. Realistically though nothing will change and we'll go through this all again in two years because they'll stick with plain old Hodgson and his plain old methods.

I'll still be an eternal optimist though, because it's more fun that way.

[Viazon]

It's clearly Obamas fault.

[PorkChop]

England draw 0-0 with Costa Rica, finish bottom of the World Cup group stage without a win.

I don't consider that a small problem.

[Daz]

Hopefully with a lot of the older players on their last legs, by the time the next tournament rolls around, we'll be forced to go with the younger players. Maybe that'll shake things up a little.

[AkydefGoldberg]

The FA made a mistake in asking the players to go to Portugal, then USA, then Brazil.

I'd have thought it'd have been better for the players to go straight to Brazil and spend a week or two getting comfortable with the conditions, have friendlies against Brazilian club sides.

[SortaCreative]

Who is to blame for the poor England side?

A lack of promoted, home grown talent imo. Clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and United have 60-70% foreign players.