England v Costa Rica: why we went out with a whimper

It has been the most dismal campaign in living memory – and I have watched nearly 200 hundred England games. Will the national team ever again be a force at a major tournament?

Rewriting history

The idea that England are, or indeed have ever been, the centre of the footballing universe is a highly contentious one, based on a patriarchal notion of “giving the game to the world”, and a single success achieved on home soil a couple of months before Roy Hodgson‘s 19th birthday. Nothing can take away the superb achievement of Alf Ramsey’s men in 1966, but it remains, to this day, the exception rather than the rule and the myth that it bestowed any level of entitlement upon us needs to be debunked.

In nine global tournaments England have contested since then, the apex of our achievement has been to reach the semi-finals in totally haphazard fashion in 1990. The iconic tears of Paul Gascoigne in Turin, so revered in contemporary culture, could equally be seen as the moment when the superiority complex of England’s national team became so ingrained that any subsequent tournament elimination felt like a miscarriage of justice.

The dismissals of David Beckham in 1998 and Wayne Rooney in 2006, Ronaldinho’s free kick in Shizuoka and Frank Lampard’s “goal that never was” four years ago all heightened this feeling of unfulfilled destiny. In reality, if you chronicle the 84 year history of the World Cup in truly global terms, England’s contribution equates to Pete Best’s role in relation to the entire career of The Beatles.

A league apart

“It’s the best league in the world” we are constantly reminded and it is hard to argue. Season upon season the Premier League dishes up glamour, drama, passion and everything else that goes to make up a sporting spectacle beloved by an insatiable global audience of billions.

It is the brand leader in showcasing the world’s talent on a weekly basis and shows few signs of being supplanted in the affections of soccer fans in every corner of the globe. When the likes of Sheikh Mansour and the Glazer family jumped onto the gravy train it was not with a overriding sense of philanthropy but with a cold, hard, unstinting desire to make a buck.

Why on earth should these people pay the slightest regard to the fact that their patronage of English clubs has an adverse effect on the national team? Why field half a dozen home grown youngsters when you can get Yaya Toure, Diego Costa or Mesut Ozil with the loose change at the bottom of the world’s deepest pockets? Let’s face it, when a kid in Malaysia buys a Manchester United shirt it is not with the express intention of helping England end 48 years of hurt.

Once more with feeling

There persists the feeling that pulling on the England shirt may not quite be the acme of professional achievement that the Club England publicity machine would have you believe. Harry Redknapp has recently suggested that some players would be more than happy to avoid England games and it’s an open secret that Premier League managers have, in the past, deliberately prevented their precious charges from compromising their fitness in international fixtures.

While many nations in the World Cup have belted out their national anthems with hands on hearts (some even producing additional a capella verses), England needed a three line whip from the coach before mumbling “God Save The Queen” almost as if it were an affront to their dignity. Again, it is tempting to deduce that the Premier and Champions Leagues offer a far more realistic route to immortality than international competitions in which the slim chance of ultimate glory is outweighed by the probable opprobrium that goes with perennial under achievement.

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Backward momentum

The ongoing inability to recapture the spirit of ’66 is all the more galling for the fact that, while other nations have discovered the theory of evolution, England still stand like King Canute defying the seas of change. Take the example of our European peers. Back when Bobby Moore hosted the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley it matched the Germans’ only success in 1954, Holland had never progressed beyond the first round of a World Cup and France had managed a solitary quarter final on home soil in 1938.

Only Italy with two World Cups triumphs, the last of them 28 years previously, were ahead of us in European terms. Since 1966 Germany and Italy have won it twice, France once and Holland have reached three finals, two of them in years when England failed to qualify. Don’t even get me started on the European Championships.

In 2010 under Fabio Capello’s austere and unsuccessful campaign, England’s dismal World Cup performance was only eclipsed by the French who failed to qualify from their group amid a backdrop of discontent and outright mutiny.

Five months later, with a totally revamped side, they played us off the park at Wembley and in Brazil they have qualified with a game to spare having scored eight times in two matches. Teams like Chile, Colombia, Belgium, USA, Mexico and even Costa Rica and Algeria have made great strides forward while England have stagnated.

Lack of ambition

The game against Costa Rica offered England a real chance to dust themselves down, restore pride and provide a genuine declaration of intent as we move forward into European Championships qualification. It did none of those things as the previously unheralded central Americans effortlessly negotiated the single point they needed to top the group and England left Brazil not with a bang but with a whimper. While the selections of Luke Shaw, Ross Barkley and Jack Wilshere were to be applauded, other selections appeared to confirm that genuine vision and ambition is in chronically short supply.

Why did Ben Foster not Fraser Forster start in goal? Why was Phil Jones deployed at right back instead of centre half? Why were Chris Smalling and James Milner deployed at all? Instead of a World Cup tie the whole thing felt like little more than a Frank Lampard testimonial match in which he and Steven Gerrard joined hands for a final bow as if the England fans in Belo Horizonte, some of whom had spent thousands of pounds to attend an ultimately dead rubber, were expected to shower the arena with bouquets.

It is not often you feel genuine anger at an England match, but the fact that these incredible supporters will henceforth be penalised for travelling the world to follow their team makes the blood boil. You see, in the infinite wisdom of the FA, the double points towards World Cup tickets which were previously awarded to fans who travel to foreign matches in hot spots such as Slovakia and Belarus, will now be handed instead to those who drive round the North Circular to watch home games at Wembley. The next engagement at this great west London white elephant will be a friendly against Norway in early September. As if the poor England fans haven’t suffered enough.

John Anderson is commentating on World Cup games for talkSPORT. You can follow him on Twitter @GreatFaceRadio