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In this Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008 file photo England's soccer coach Fabio Cappello, left announces the appointment of the team captain John Terry, right in London. A senior Football Association official said Friday Feb. 5. 2010 that John Terry has been stripped of the England captaincy by coach Fabio Capello following a media storm over his private life. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)
The story is the same. Always, over and over again, the same. Great expectations, ubiquitous confidence, and ultimately, celebrated disappointment. Still, regardless of historical calamities, optimism is rife once again.
This is the year. Their time. Or at least that’s the ideal running perpetually through the minds of a supremely proud football nation. After 44 agonizing, intestinal wrenching years, England will, again, finally hold the World Cup aloft. This is the dream.
It is this very concoction of optimism and pessimism that continues to set them up for what can only be described as glorious failure. Still, despite this deadly blend, expectations are high. Expectations that are somewhat unfairly bestowed on the team by a frenzied media and a sporting public who are ravenous for success. The country’s greatest weakness is their fantastic confidence; they honestly believe that they will win every time. This is what makes it all the more tragic.
Sporting history is riddled with calamitous meltdowns under the direct heat of the international spotlight. Catastrophic failures when the sight of victory is nigh are nothing new to behold. But no sporting team seems to come under more intense scrutiny for their unfulfilled potential than the England national football team. See, there is a self-righteousness that plagues the English public. They feel that, as the inventors of the organized form of the round ball sport, they are somewhat expected, nay, they do expect, that their men should be the best in the world. Subsequently, when anything less is achieved, the players who are responsible are cast out to the slaughter like sacrificial lambs.
It is these ghosts of tournaments past that make it all the more difficult for the new squad of twenty-three to start anew. Like it or not, there is a collective sense that these players – rookies and veterans – are doomed from the beginning, long before they hit the pitch.
In 2010, the nation’s hopes and dreams will rest on the bootlaces of ruffian frontman Wayne Rooney. The 24-year-old striker is coming off his most decorated season to date; bagging a hat-trick of awards to go with his 34 goals (last month he collected the Professional Footballers’ Association and Football Writers’ prizes, and more recently the Barclays Player of the Season accolade).
England will be hoping that this form translates to the World Cup and he uses his prized golden boot to navigate footballs into the back of the net and not have it drawn towards the male anatomy as it was in 2006 – an imprudent incident that saw him red carded and ejected from the quarter-final, England’s hopes of winning following him directly up the tunnel. A short while after the malicious stomp, England was knocked out on penalties.
Another familiar face that has featured heavily on newsstands in the lead-up to this year’s tournament has been square-jawed central defender John Terry. In late January, it was revealed that Terry had been involved in a clandestine amour with a French lingerie model. This would have been fine, except for the fact that John Terry is married with twins and the French lingerie model is the mother of the child of former Chelsea and England teammate, Wayne Bridge.
Considering that philandering in somewhat in vogue recently, particular with professional sportsmen, this caused little consternation among the masses. But Terry’s extra curricular activities did not wash over well with his new manager, who stripped him of his captain’s armband. To make matters worse, Terry’s libido wasn’t the only thing that was wandering around at the time. Shortly after the affair was revealed, Terry ran over the the leg of the Stamford Bridge deputy security guard as he exited the car park after Chelsea’s 1-0 loss to Inter Milan in the Champions League final-16. Needless to say, these unwelcome distractions were not greeted with fervor from the English sporting public, especially as Terry was the man expected to lead the charge.
A notable absentee from the squad this year will be pinpoint free-kicking playboy David Beckham. On March 14, Beckham suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon when playing for AC Milan, ending his pursuit of becoming the first England player to appear in four World Cups. But Beckham is no longer the fulcrum of the side and the fanfare this time was not nearly as hysterical as the circus that surrounded his injury 8 years ago.
In 2002, when Beckham broke the metatarsal bone in his left foot a mere 51 days before England’s first World Cup group game against Sweden, the nation went on 24-hour Beckham foot watch. Everybody from the milkman to the Prime Minister had an opinion on the issue that consumed the entire nation’s conscience. Would Beckham be right to take the pitch?
During a weekly cabinet meeting, the Middle East and the Budget were placed on the backburner as Tony Blair and other dignitaries took time out to discuss the welfare of one of the country’s most successful exports. The word coming out of Number 10 Downing Street? That “nothing was more important to England’s arrangements for the World Cup than the state of David Beckham’s foot.” This year, there was less pandemonium, and Beckham was allowed to limp off into the sunset, quietly ending his international career and saving his manager the trouble of an extremely tough selection decision.
Steering the ship through the treacherous ocean of hope and expectation will be the decorated Italian, Fabio Capello. Unlike past international assignments where England players we’re able to indulge in life’s modest luxuries, Capello made it supremely clear at the very first meeting with his new combatants that those days were long gone. Scribbled on a whiteboard at the Watford hotel where the meeting took place were such things as; WAGS (the à la mode acronym for wives and girlfriends) were not allowed to visit the team hotel; no players were allowed to walk around in shorts and thongs; mobile phones were not to be used in public; and players were not allowed to use Playstation video game consoles (effectively ruling out any hope England had of winning the World Cup, even if it were only in computer-generated form).
After the meeting concluded and the England players had been put through their paces on the practice pitch, Rio Ferdinand described Day One of the Capello régime as the “first day at a new school”. Considering the lengthy set of new regulations that had been imposed on the team, one would imagine that Rio was referring to a military school, but still.
Despite the assumption that Capello’s England will be a tight, disciplined, well-drilled machine, perfectly designed to penetrate deep into the tournament, there will always be an air of inevitability that it will all unravel. A murky cloud hangs over the team because of preceding tournaments, and there is always the chance of rain. Somehow, somewhere along the journey, something will happen that will shift momentum and ultimately signal the beginning of the end. And when it happens, England fans will know.
In 2006, it was Wayne Rooney’s untimely stomp on Portuguese defender Ricardo Carvalho’s most prized possessions. The referee navigated his way through a sea of Portuguese players – headed by Rooney’s Manchester United teammate Cristiano Ronaldo – who were enthusiastically pleading for Rooney’s demise, before locating England’s 20-year-old wunderkind and brandishing a dreaded, but deserved, red card. England would show steely resolve after the departure of Rooney, but they would ultimately lose on penalties. Naturally.
In the 2002 quarter-final against Brazil, England took a surprising 1-0 lead after 23 minutes when opportunistic striker Michael Owen put them ahead, capitalizing on a horrible error by Brazilian defender Lúcio. Despite the deficit being erased moments before the half time whistle, England still entertained the idea that their team could upset the South American giants. That was until the inevitable happened in the 53rd minute. Goalkeeper David Seaman was caught off his line, helpless to do anything as a 42-yard free kick from the mercurial Ronaldinho took a subtle parabolic shape and curled over the ponytailed England number one and under the cross bar – a disastrous error that deflated any hope England fans harbored of victory. 9 days later, Brazil would hold the World Cup aloft for the fifth time.
In 1998, the great white hope of English football, David Beckham, lay face down on the turf and reacted to a hard foul from Argentinean captain Diego Simeone by hastily kicking him in the back of the leg. Simeone, never one to shy away from flaunting his stage-worthy thespian skills, crashed to the turf and writhed in counterfeit agony. He was rewarded for his performance when Beckham received a red card for his imprudent action, and as he walked off the pitch, his number seven jersey untucked and disheveled, the England supporters may as well have walked out with him. They did, not surprisingly, lose on penalties.
This year, to literally add another dimension to how the greater public witness England’s inevitable demise, a selection of World Cup games will be telecast in 3-D for the very first time. Whatever may transpire on the pitch – whether it be in the form of a red card, a sinful defensive error or the predestined penalty whistling past the outstretched hands of an English goalkeeper – nobody will have ever seen it from such a unique perspective. You will literally have to swerve out of the way as a decisive England penalty kick clangs off the crossbar and ricochets back towards the TV screen. It promises to be a breathtaking experience.
With the Barclays English Premier League wrapped up, one hundred percent of the nation’s attention is now focused on the World Cup. Anticipation will grip the nation’s psyche as people begin to dream about the possibilities. Like millions of brainwashed zombies, fans will forget the gut-wrenching heartbreak of the past and concentrate solely on the future. But soon enough this forced ignorance will fade and certain moments will surface that will unearth old wounds. England are setting themselves up for glorious failure once again, and I’m sure they wouldn’t have it any other way.
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