That's it... destroy the village

Is there anything at all that's salvageable?



Thankfully, it was only a friendly, but a last-gasp, comedy-of-errors, listless 2-2 draw at home to the Czech Republic is hardly the stuff that builds confidence. Fabio Capello once again ignored all the promises and fantastical talk he wooed the press with upon first being hired, and trotted out a team so devoid of imagination and experiment that Glenn Hoddle could have picked it.

We're 2 years from the World Cup (that is, assuming we make it, ugh), and this is the XI selected by Fabio to get some valuable playing time and experience:

GK - David James (age 38)

LB - Ashley Cole (27)
CB - Rio Ferdinand (29)
CB - John Terry (27)
RB - Wes Brown (28)

LM - Frank Lampard (30)
CM - Gareth Barry (27)
RM - David Beckham (33)

LF - Steven Gerrard (28)
RF - Wayne Rooney (22)

ST - Jermain Defoe (25)

Brilliant, isn't it? The same cast of indentured characters, several of whom will surely be too old to participate in the World Cup itself! Thus, why waste the time? It's not like we need to play it safe in friendlies and make sure we win points... there's none to play for!

The second half saw little improvement, as the players of the future saw the last 20 minutes or so without any real chance to assert themselves on the pace of the game.

It's a very depressing thing to see ones country struggling like this. Years of the same-old, same-old rubbish from a string of uninspired managers who seemingly picked the same 15 players for every match, regardless of domestic form. The sea change for me was the continued selection of Beckham (yes, I know, I dog him frequently), who was rewarded for taking a big payday to play in a more sedate league with plenty more caps for his country, not to mention that the quality of his individual play at the Galaxy has been far from dominant either! (Lest we forget that Huckerby outshone him in their recent meeting)

And yet, nothing changes! The media get sick and vitriolic, Capello answers the criticism and then we sit and watch the entire thing repeated over and over again from match to match.

Capello promised us the world, a brave, exciting new vision of an England team selected on merit, a novelty for us, and the guarantee that new faces and new talents would be given every chance to shine in all these pointless friendlies leading up to our World Cup qualification group.

In reality, we've seen nothing to get excited about. Andorra is just around the corner as qualification begins, but it's not difficult to imagine a match-up much tougher than it should be. And the longer Fabio continues to ride these ineffectual horses into the ground, the longer our disappointment and failure continues.

[The strain was enough for Brian Barwick to quit yesterday... the entire FA should be dismantled and rebuilt again until the national team is something worth cheering about]

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Americans Have So Much To Learn About Competition

[Ed Note: Suckers! That's what we are. We fell for this. As someone smarter than us realized, Piraollof is an anagram. Oops. At least we were smart enough to be entirely skeptical of this. But since we're nothing if not overly biased when it comes to our teams good sports, we're running it unedited.]


Compared to Europe, American sports scandals are pretty amateurish.

We have a coach, who might or might not have filmed another teams walk through, get caught staring at another woman's ass.

British coaches tape their own S&M romps with hookers.

We have a high-profile quarterback get drunk with a bunch of girls who might or might not have been underaged.

In Turkey, they kill people.

Now there is this completely unsubstantiated rumor about the Russians drugging opponents prior to qualifiers for Euro 2008.

"Andorra defender Anthoni Lima from Sd Eivissa claims [Alexandra] Piraollof, a member of the Russian backroom staff, drugged key players in the Andorra team prior to the crucial Euro 2008 qualifier, which sealed England’s and Steve McClarens exit from the tournament."

This might (or might not) mean that, if Russia is disqualified, England (as the 3rd place team in the group) would takes the vacated spot in this summer's European Championships. (But really, the Russians are now stealing tactics from hotel chefs feeding the Yids?)

Again, aside from the fact that this is currently unsubstantiated, there should be a couple of red flags. First is the phrase "key players in the Andorra team." There is no such thing as a key player for Andorra.

I've had more people in my bed before than there are in Andorra. So if ever there were an opponent you wouldn't need to drug it would be Andorra (okay, it might still be Aruba, but I think I've made the point).

Of course this is the Internet, and journalistic standards are as low as you would like to make them. So, we shall point out that in the comments some guy named "Matt Quinn" swears his mate knows more about this, that there are more teams than Andorra involved, and that it is going to break over the next couple of weeks.

And his mate knows what he's talking about because he knew that the Special One was going to be ousted from Stamford Bridge two days before it happened. And nobody else say that coming. Nope, not a soul.

So, England, your dream of sucking on an even bigger stage might still be on life support. If nothing else, you've given American fans a higher standard of 'delusion' to aspire to.

Unless of course this all turns out to be true, in which case you're just re-re-re-confirming how pitiful we are at actual sports scandal.

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