Jumpers for goalposts won’t help England to play tika-taka

Act 1 Scene 1

Jan 1986.  Playing Sunday league football. A blustery municipal playing field somewhere in south east London.

Wipe rain from eyes. Likewise mud from brow. Clear leaves and dog mess from studs. Hoof it to biglad up front. Ball catches vicious gust and carries an extra 30 yards into the other team’s half. Splashes and bounds unpredictably off waterlogged surface.  Biglad collects ball and bulldozes through four boys a foot or so smaller and probably half his body weight towards goal. Toe-punts it into top corner. Keeper can’t even reach the crossbar. Goal!

Wipe rain and mud off and repeat. Repeat again. And once more for good measure. We won! Happy days…

Act 1 Scene 2

June 1986. Watching the Mexico World Cup finals. The comfort of my front room, somewhere in south east London.

Wipe tears from eyes. Blink in incredulity. Small bloke waltzes and pirouettes across bone dry pitch and leaves entire team of leaden-footed oafs prostrate.  most of them “big blokes”. Small bloke arrives before keeper – also a “big bloke”.  Shimmies one way, dances the other, then slots calmly in bottom corner. Goal!  Maradona sends England home with a display of footballing genius that has never been bettered.

Wipe away tears and hopes, fast forward four years to Italia 90 and repeat similar. Fast forward 24 more years to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and repeat once more for good measure. Albeit without the stellar performance of the opposition. But one thing is undeniably the same. Pedestrian, unimaginative, mediocre England peter out before the tournament’s even got going.

Act 2 Scene 1

July 2013. Andy Murray has just won the men’s Wimbledon final. The hoodoo is broken! Lessons for football?

Wipe sweat from brow. It’s hot. One of those rare summer days in the UK that will see schoolkids playing football in the park till after sundown and evening diners bare-shouldered till the early hours. A bit like living in southern Europe, or Florida. And it’s the day after the big lad from Dunblane proves that British tennis might finally be learning it’s lesson.

But all the talk is of how little time Murray actually spends training in the UK. He went to a tennis academy in Spain as a teenager to hone his game. And now lives near Miami. And the LTA’s performance director is on the defensive. Physio, technical, sports science support – Murray receives all of this and more from the LTA. But he still spends most of his hours overseas enjoying the sunshine.  “Come on, think about it,” says the LTA’s man, “Where would you rather train?  Here or Spain? We don’t get days like this very often here…”

The penny drop He’s right. We don’t get days like that very often here. If only…

Act 2 Scene 2

Aug 2013. Family holiday. Majorca.

Try and wipe envy from face. Beautiful dappled evening light. Hasn’t rained for months. Not a cloud in sight. Driving to beach in early evening with kids. We pass a pristine tennis court. Then a brand-new five-a-side football  pitch. Then another. Then another. They’re everywhere. And they’re busy. Busy with kids, mums, dads, coaches, the amateur, the clearly quite serious. Here are Spain’s future football champions. Playing tika-taka in the sun…

Act 3

Sep 2013. Speech by new FA chairman Greg Dyke.

Reasons.  Reasons. Reasons. Why are England unable to field a decent international football team? Why are there fewer eligible England internationals than ever before? And what – if anything – can be done to create the generation of world-beating footballers England has been seeking for so long?

Well, there’s all that foreign money (yes, the money that was meant to entice foreign artisans in the hope some of their panache might rub off). There’s the foreign club owners, and the foreign managers, none of whom presumably have much emotion invested in seeing England do well. There’s the lack of qualified coaches. There’s the lack of technical ability. Which of course goes back to the good old-fashioned “kick it to the big bloke” mentality that’s forged on wet, windy, waterlogged pitches in the depths of midwinter, somewhere in the British ‘burbs.

A persuasive chairman Greg Dyke may well be, but even he has his limitations.  No wonder what he didn’t mention was our weather.

Denouement

Tonight. World Cup qualifier, Ukraine v England, Kiev.

England have to win to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of fighting for a World Cup play-off spot. New-found striking star Rickie Lambert to start. All 6’2” of him. He of MacclesfieldTown, Stockport County, Rochdale, Bristol Rovers and Southampton fame. Yes, Rickie Lambert of the prolific late form, and now 100 per cent international scoring record – two goals in two games for his country. Rickie Lambert, who is every inch an English centre forward. Big, strong, and quick.  And as it happens, evidently fleet of foot and sharp of mind.

It is not Lambert England fans need worry about. It is the rest of the team, indeed the thousands of English players who may one day be eligible to pull on the coveted white shirt. Because the lumbering way England play football will take more than a commission to fix.

And the weather forecast for Kiev tonight is looking distinctly European. Balmy highs of 21. No chance of rain. A slight 3mph wind, just enough to help a perfectly flighted ball swing past a keeper. Perfect weather for tika-taka. If only it was blowing a hackney marshes hoolie and maybe, for once, the football gods would be on England’s side.

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