Tomorrow, England play what will be their last game in this 2014 Football World Cup tournament when they meet Costa Rica, their last game in Group D. Costa Rica have already qualified for the next stage by beating both Italy and Uruguay and based on that form they should beat England to give them a 100% record in Round 1. However, England being England, I expect they will produce their best performance of the tournament; I will not put money on them to win but it is just possible that they will. Their efforts against Uruguay were so abysmal that they cannot but improve on that. Continuing the Wagner metaphor from my last post, I ask, will they produce the marvellous moments along with the terrible half-hours. Another Wagner quote I remember is that by the American critic who said that Wagner's music was better than it sounded.and Tchaikovski who sat through hours and hours of The Ring and as the last notes of the final opera died away, he felt he had been let out of prison. So it is with the England.football team. On paper they have a team that seems much better than it plays and as the final steps of another inept display fade away, we can get back to reality. As a friend said to me at the end of last week, "Now that England are definitely knocked out, we can relax and enjoy the football."
I have just been re-reading an article from the Daily Mail in January 2011 when Joe Bernstein wondered if footballers in England were over-paid. The question is still relevant today. Too many footballers, said Joe Bernstein, were millionaires driving around in Ferraris when they deserved no better than Reliant Robins. The Mail article was published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the abolition of the footballer's maximum wage in 1961. At that time no player could earn more than £20 per week, which was just above the average wage in the UK. Now the average pay of a Premier League footballer is about £35,000 per week and the maximum [Wayne Rooney] is £300,000 per week. The average wage for Joe Public is about £600 per week. So an average footballer has gone from earning the average wage [about] to earning 54 times the average wage. Are these players of such awesome brilliance that their pay is justified? For many years now, the England football teams have failed to perform over and over again and nothing is done. The players continue getting their fabulous wages and living a life of extreme luxury. I do not watch Premier League football very much any more because I think that much of it is mediocre in spite of the vast sums handed to the players. And the pundits in the TV studios seem oblivious to the problem. Have they become so used to mediocrity that they do not recognize the inferior quality of the play.
David Beckham was not the greatest footballer in the world but he always made an effort. In taking free kicks and scoring he was supreme; he set the standard for others to copy. And he could pass a ball inch perfect. But he did this by practicing and practicing until he could do it again and again. Even now Beckham still says how proud he was to play for England and how even more proud he was to be captain. Apart from goal-keeper Peter Shilton, Beckham is the most capped player in English football history with 115 caps — although this total was equalled by Steven Gerrard in the match against Uruguay last week.
Now Harry Redknapp has thrown another cat among the pigeons by suggesting that during his time at Tottenham he knew of players who did not want to play for England and asked him as club manager to help them avoid this or that game. This has incensed Gerrard who has demanded that Redknapp names names. It is not a revelation that will surprise many of us. Former England manager Graham Taylor has come out in support of Redknapp, saying that players not wanting to play for their country is "not particularly new." Often Premier League managers help players suffer "injuries" in order to keep them out of international matches when the player was crucial for an upcoming Champions League or Premier League match — games that could make difference of millions of pounds to club income. And these clubs pay the players's fabulous salaries. How often it is the player who has wanted to escape international duty and how often it was the manager wanting to keep the player rested and uninjured, we do not know. Yet more support came from John Harton, former coach of the Welsh team, who said that clubs play a part in footballers not wanting to play for their country.
Premier League football is all about money. Many players have little or no contact with fans and as long as the money keeps rolling in, why should they bother. Also, I think many players are enveloped in a cloud of their own delusions. If there are clubs daft enough to pay them more than £100,000 per week, they must have huge talents and the fans ought to be grateful for being allowed the opportunities to see them play. But to a lot of football supporters, the England team is the pinnacle. We want to see them win and win well.
How many can remember that day in the Olympic Stadium, Munich on 1st September 2001, when England beat Germany by 5 — 1, Michael Owen scored a hat-trick and Sven Goren Erickson was the manager? The nation — with some justification — could not believe it. The Germans couldn't believe it either. It was said the BBC, "a stunning performance as England came from behind to thrash the Germans. Previously,in their whole history, Germany had only lost one home game in qualifying for the World Cup. They were torn apart by England playing slick football with a clinical edge up front." That team included Beckham as captain and, in addition to Owen, they had Neville, Ferdinand, Campbell, Cole, Barmby, Scholes, Gerrard and Heskey with Seaman in goal. That was the same Steven Gerrard who captained England in the debacle in Brazil. Can he explain where the difference lies? Is it just that the team of 2001 really was much better than the team of 2014?
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