World Cup Exposes Our Achilles Heel

Neville Dalton is a journalist and a Portsmouth fan of more than 40 years.

It was somewhere towards the last 10 minutes of England's match against Germany that the incontrovertible proof that so many blinkered fans and so-called experts seemed to need finally arrived.

For days all I'd read and heard was that England were going to stuff the Germans; that we were slow starters but now well and truly on our way; that Germany weren't really all that good, at least not yet.

And at half-time, much of what should have been the real debate about England's woeful shortcomings, both in that match and - to varying degrees - in all our previous games in the tournament, was overshadowed by the totally irrelevant discussion about goal-line technology.

Sure, if England had drawn level with that perfectly legitimate - if not entirely deserved - second goal, it could have been a different outcome.

Certainly, we would not have lost 4-1.

But maybe the inadequacy of the referee and his assistant - for that was where the real blame lay - did us a favour by denying us the opportunity conveniently to mask the real problem with England's performances.

So, that moment?

The Germans were 4-1 up and cruising. They had possession once more and were surging forward. Not for the first time, England were exposed down the left-hand side.

Suddenly, there were two attackers side by side with the ball and another two running into the penalty area.

Germany were 4-1 up and through. Yet still they attacked. Still they wanted another goal.

Contrast that with a few days earlier in Port Elizabeth: England were hanging on desperately against Slovenia, trying to keep the ball in the corner, the likes of Emile Heskey shielding it from Slovenian defenders.

It was a perfectly legitimate - if somewhat unedifying - tactic that helped ensure England scraped through to the knockout stages.

But it revealed a world of difference in the approaches of the two teams, and more significantly, their confidence in their ability.

Shock

This is not (for once) a debate about attacking approaches to matches, although it's invariably the more capable teams that play with flair and without inhibition.

This is purely about ability. And for all their individual talent, England have proved, unfortunately, to be in a different class, not only from the Germans but from most of the teams that emerged from the group stages.

Tell us what's new, scream many of the hindsight brigade. But think back even just to the day of the Bloemfontein clash.

Everywhere you looked or listened, fans, pundits and players alike were predicting an England win.

There appeared to be genuine shock that we could manage only a draw with the Americans; the Algeria draw was viewed as a disgrace (hopefully a one-off) against a team enjoying "their Cup Final", according to Mr Gerrard.

And the narrow, unspectacular win over Slovenia was suddenly heralded as the dawning of a new age - the arrival of the "real" England in South Africa.

All rational thought and argument seemed to disappear in a haze of blinkered enthusiasm - which is fine, as long as you don't start believing the hype that you start creating.

Then, all of a sudden, you risk a level of disappointment disproportionate to the scale of events.

We England fans are smarting right now. But it shouldn't be with shock.

Anger, maybe. Frustration, definitely.

Yet another promising England team has failed to live up to expectation, an expectation fuelled by players - both in what they produced in the build-up to the finals and in what they said once we'd qualified; by the media undoubtedly, who often fail to distinguish between optimism and realism.

And by ourselves, much like we so often delude ourselves about Pompey's prospects.

Certainly, the qualifying campaign - and Fabio Capello's record at that stage - gave us genuine cause for optimism, although even then, we should have been bearing in mind England's regular failure to carry winter form into the summer.

But the writing began to appear on the wall even before those apologies for performances in the warm-up games against Mexico and Japan.

Stilted

Wayne Rooney's sensational club form that saw him soar to the top of the Premier League goal charts in the spring had already petered out since his injury in the Champions League. And he was the one we could not do without, it seemed.

Rio Ferdinand was injured for much of the latter part of the season; Ledley King was just coming back from injury. Joe Cole had been in no sort of form since his own long injury lay-off, we were informed.

And there was a suggestion of disharmony in the squad since the revelations of John Terry's shenanigans with Wayne Bridge's former belle.

England's performances in those two warm-up games were largely stilted and unconvincing. But we chose to seek solace in the fact that you can't read too much into warm-up games (fair point, although winning teams tend to want to retain that rhythm) - and we still managed to win them.

It did not bode well for the tournament proper - that was the time when I lowered my own expectations (I predicted draws against all three group opponents and for us to go out to Germany in the next round).

But any lingering doubts I might have had about my pessimism were swept away by our opening performances, when the players' minds as well as their bodies appeared to be all over the place.

They seemed scared stiff of making a mistake; far too rigid in posture and movement.

It meant that not even Rooney could get the ball under control, his first touch worse than I've ever seen it. And as for the mere mortals in the team, well, they seemed to be suffering from the same affliction - only their deterioration, of course, came from a lower starting point.

The pace that gave England so much promise in qualifying had disappeared, and playing our style of game at walking pace is asking for trouble.

Others have speculated about what was wrong. It's going to be hard for anyone to pinpoint exactly, but I suspect it was a combination of things.

The word from the media was that it wasn't a happy camp.

But to be honest, if you can't get excited about playing on the greatest football stage, even if you don't agree with the manager's tactics or PlayStation embargoes, what are you doing playing the beautiful game?

Did the Terry-Bridge thing really split the squad? There may have been some lingering resentment, but surely a bunch of highly-paid grown men can put personal feelings aside for long enough to win a few football matches?

And in any case, the man with the biggest grievance wasn't even there.

Which brings me to another reason for pre-tournament realism. We keep being told (often by each other) that England had one of the best squads at the World Cup.

Why fear teams like the Germans when we had Gerrard, Lampard, Terry and Rooney?

Well, did we really? Have one of the best squads, I mean.

Sure, we had some of the world's best players - though, as I've already said, not necessarily fit of body and mind.

But a whole team of world-beaters? I think not. And what about those on the bench, or promoted to the first-team in the absence of some of the better players?

Hysterical

The debate about who should be goalkeeper - and Capello's own quandary - indicated that that key position was far from secure.

Cover for Glen Johnson (whose tenure of the right-back position would surely by now be in doubt were it not for the lack of alternative) came in the shape of a player who not only preferred to play for his club than country, but whose inadequacies were exposed regularly in the Premier and Champions Leagues, let alone on the world stage.

The Terry fallout meant there was no cover at left-back. And our apparent embarrassment of riches on the wings (well, the right wing, anyway) proved to be - well, just an embarrassment.

You could go through virtually every position and come up with reasons why we should be cautious in our confidence of the team's prospects.

Many on this message board have made excellent points about where the real problems might lie: the Premier League's greed; the inclusion of so many foreign players; our short-termism approach to the game and lack of high-quality grass-roots coaching.

Many are hyper-critical of Capello - hysterically so, in my opinion. But his rigid approach to tactics, alongside some baffling team selections, substitutions and squad choice in the first place all deserve closer scrutiny.

But let's face it, he was also the man in charge of our qualifying campaign, where he got it right nearly every time - with a few goals along the way.

Come to that, the players had proved that on their day, they could beat anyone.

But unfortunately, their day rarely comes in the summer months, or more to the point, at the end of a gruelling and energy-sapping season.

I know most players at the World Cup had just finished their own seasons - many alongside our own stars in England.

But no other squad had to rely solely on products of our ridiculously destructive Premier League.

Aching limbs, damaged bones and muscles and fatigued minds were what our much-revered league left us with.

And it wasn't enough.

The World Cup was a step too far.

And unless we alter our approach, it always will be, whichever players we choose.