EPL Talk » England national team

Replacing David Beckham… (Bend It Like Walcott?)

Ethan Armstrong — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:02:03 +0000

Until Fabio Capello took the wheel at England FC, I had this vision of an England World Cup qualifier 40 years from now:

England are facing Croatia (who else) in a must-win fixture. The Three Lions are playing with ten men, though nobody’s been ejected. On 25 minutes, Luca Modric III goes in for an ugly slide tackle. The whistle blows. Play stops. England win the kick.

That’s when the medical staff roll him out. The crowd erupts in a fevered cheer. As Croatia compose their wall, the attendants park him three feet from the ball. The crowd becomes silent. The legend rises from his wheelchair, the wind rustling his gray mohawk. Standing, he seems to regain the stature and strength of his youth. He looks at his target, strides to the ball, then scoops it powerfully into the crisp London air. It arcs over the jumping Croatians and sails toward the target. At first it seems like the ball will go over, but at the last minute it dips into the top corner as the keeper flails in vain.

1-0 to England.

An attendant rushes to grab Sir David Beckham’s arm as the 74-year-old winger loses his balance. The attendant helps him back to his chair and they wheel him back to the sidelines to wait for the next set play.

I really thought they’d never stop playing Beckham. Even as his endurance faded and younger, faster players grew restless on the bench, no one would push this great talent from the team. For England’s Operation Get To The Next World Cup to succeed I thought they’d need to drop David Beckham. Especially after they failed to qualify for the Euro. Yes, he still had gas in his tanks, but it was more important, I thought, to season the next generation than to cling to the old stalwart. Don’t play him just to get him to the 100 match landmark, I thought.

England needs its young wingers to have considerable international experience to really make an impact on 2010. But it’s been so hard to ween England off Beckham and give the younger men their pitch hours.

I can see why.

Beckham can still airmail that ball right where he wants it, whenever he wants to. A million yards out and he’ll tuck his foot into just the right spot and the thing swerves across the pitch and ends up a foot in front of Rooney’s head or it bounces off Gerrard’s chest or it bounces off the goal post and in. We’ve seen it for so many years you’d think we wouldn’t be impressed any more. But it’s a thrilling thing of beauty every time. It’s the skill that makes him a legend. Nobody does it better. At least not for England. After seeing it millions of times, it is still amazing to behold. Like the first two Godfather films.

I really didn’t think he’d last this long. Whenever he got called up, I’d think: Why are they still playing him so much? He’s not going to be going strong at the next World Cup! Get the next generation ready! He wasn’t going to have the pace to keep up with the young internationals coming up through the other countries’ teams.

But what he misses out on in pace at 34, he makes up for with the fact he doesn’t need to get deep down the wing to launch the ball into the danger zone. He can lose his defender in shallower regions of the pitch and curl the service into the attackers with deadly precision.

He’s not going to fit into the playbill in every situation. But in Capello, England finally have a manager who sees that and who will give the likes of Walcott, Lennon and Wright-Phillips their chances each to make Beckham’s place their own. This is the time to ease him out without discarding him totally. Beckham still has something invaluable to give, but the others have a mark to make and need the time to do so. Capello seems to get this and strives to keep the balance. He won’t play Beckham for the sake of playing Beckham as McClaren so often did. He’ll follow the needs of the situation.

Still…

Bend it like Walcott? Bend it like Lennon? Bend it like SWP?

These boys have pace and skills and one of them can blossom into England’s next legendary wide right man. But the Three Lions will miss that one particular artistry that only David Beckham brings. Bending it like himself.

We’ll see a few more of them arc home yet, though. Before his curtain falls.

Setanta UK To Offer Its Own Free-To-Air Highlight Program Of Croatia-England

Jeff Hash — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:21:34 +0000

The Guardian is reporting that Setanta Sports in the United Kingdom has reached a series of deals with several television providers to go unencrypted and offer its own highlight program for tonight’s match between Croatia and England. The program starts at 10:45 PM British time, and will feature highlights of both the England match and Scotland’s World Cup qualifier with Iceland.

This comes after Setanta rejected several last-hour deals for the highlights, including a 500,000 pound offer from FA broadcast contract partner ITV. Setanta said that none of the offers made by free-to-air broadcasters reflected the value of the network’s investment to obtain the rights. Free-to-air broadcasters had previously accused Setanta of putting an overly high price tag (1 million pounds) on the highlights. The impasse resulted in no highlights being made available free-to-air in the UK for this past Satuday’s match against Andorra.

Setanta Has Its Rights, But Is Not Selling England Highlights In Its Best Interests?

Jeff Hash — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:59:19 +0000

We are barely a month into the new four year contract that saw England national team matches move from the BBC and Sky to ITV and Setanta, but already Setanta, despite its smaller reach and operation, is playing tough. The Times Online is reporting that Setanta has yet to reach a deal with any broadcaster for match highlights of England’s away World Cup qualifiers with Andorra and Croatia, which take place in less than two weeks. The impasse, if not settled quickly, will leave England fans unable to see the matches in any form without a Setanta subscription.

According to the FA’s television contract, ITV automatically gets to air a highlights package for any home England match shown on Setanta. However, television rights for England’s away matches are owned by the host country, who are free to sell to whomever they want. In November 2007, Setanta won the rights to all but one of England’s away qualifiers through deals with media distribution companies Sportfive and Kentaro. As such, Setanta is free to do whatever with these match highlights, and the FA is powerless to stop them.

The situation is not that simple though. Let’s consider where Setanta stands right now. Yes, the company is still not profitable at this point, and it needs more subscriptions. But Setanta is dealing with an image problem right now in Great Britain. Its broadcast of England’s friendly with the Czech Republic last week was met with mostly mixed reviews, and an audience half the size of the highlights program on ITV later that night. Setanta just can’t seem to shake the image of being a poor value version of Sky. And while that’s ok (for now) with the Premier League, who are required by the European Commission to offer some matches to a second TV service, the FA has no such issue. They have to honor the current contract, but there is no reason for them to stay after that if they don’t feel Setanta is a good partner. The FA wants as much coverage of its team as they can get, and they’ll turn up the heat on Setanta to give these rights to someone.

If a deal is not reached, the FA and Setanta will hear about it from a lot of quarters. They’ll hear about how, in just one month, Setanta will have done something that Sky never did in many years when it had the rights. Never mind that, with the total control of the market they have long had, Sky could afford to be a little generous. Suddenly, Setanta’s image among fans goes from being a poor man’s Sky to being greedy broadcasters who kept a nation of fans in the dark. Not a step in the right direction for any company, profitable or not.

Setanta is under no obligation to sell the highlights of these matches, but my guess is they will. A public relations fight is not a way to get new subscribers watching Setanta, and its also a bad way to start a new broadcast partnership. There’s no good ending here. The company will have to take their lumps and move on. After all, with profitability still eluding them, Setanta has much bigger fights to be concerned about.

Latest Gaffe Confirms The Premier League’s Biggest Weakness Is The League Itself

Jeff Hash — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:58:24 +0000

You have to hand it to the Premier League at times; when it decides they really want to shoot a hole in their foot, they know how to do it with little effort.

The Guardian broke an exclusive story today on comments made by Sir David Richards, chairman of the Premier League for the last nine years, to a conference in Dubai late last month. In the comments, Richards basically dismisses the League’s insistance it has nothing to do with the downfall of the England National Team, telling the group that the member clubs don’t develop young players because of how easy it is to go out and buy stars. He goes even farther after that, telling the crowd that, for all intents and purposes, the league led to the firing of Steve McClaren as England manager due to an inability to get the best players.

Richards told the Guardian that he did make the comments (hard to deny given the audio available on the newspaper’s website), but that they weren’t quite what he had meant. The league, for its part, later released a statement saying “These comments do not represent the collective view of the Premier League.” While that maybe true, and while the real power of the league is in the hands of the club owners, it doesn’t change the fact that one of the most senior members of Premier League management has told the world the league is holding England back. And now it will have to figure out a way to extract itself from this mess without looking like it is just punishing a man for thinking differently.

This sort of problem is hardly a new development for the league; just look back at game 39. If you look at the league’s initial announcement, the plans given were loose at best and showed very little work had been done both inside and outside the league in tying it down. The PL basically went in believing that the its stature would give them what they wanted in time. Instead, the league found itself hammered by all fronts, varying from FIFA and the FA to other national football federation and its own supporters. Facing this tidal wave, the league’s response was scattershot, letting itself and the plan get destroyed until they finally surrendered. The league ended up with weeks of bad headlines and didn’t even get what it wanted in the end, a clear public relations loss.

And then there is the constant accusations of the league being top-heavy, repeated again recently by Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan, a debate the league never truly gets away from.

These situations show one difficult truth: for all the enemies it has, the Premier League’s greatest enemy is themselves. Because of its different member clubs, it has a hard time keeping a straight story. But this is true for every soccer league, and yet the PL seem to be the most unable to put its house in order, or at least hide the rough spots. For better or for worse, these teams need to accept that it has to work together to face its critics, or it will keep losing its public relations battles. Unity is not in the individual teams best interests, but it should be the league’s highest interest. This has already cost them in the past, and without a change, it’s guaranteed to do so again.

England: Back to Life, Back To Reality With Fabio Capello

The Gaffer — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:59:52 +0000

In the past 30 years, England’s national team has suffered a lot of disappointments. The country that failed to qualify for Euro 2008 also failed to qualify for the 1974, 1978 and 1994 World Cups. Then, of course, there were the horrible performances in the 1988, 1992 and 2000 European Championships. The list goes on and on.

The debate about why England has failed to succeed on the world and European stage is complex. Ask the pundits in England why their national team has suffered, and you’ll get a long list of contradictory explanations.

Now with Fabio Capello in charge, we’ll see for once and for all whether England is actually a world power in football or not. What Capello brings to the national set-up is an ability to wipe the slate clean and play the best system that will be necessary to turn England into a winning nation.

If Capello is unable to turn England into a force in football, then we’ll know whether England’s reign as a leader in football is over or not.

In the past, there have been too many distractions and excuses. England, I feel, have been held back in the past by poor managers such as Steve McClaren and Kevin Keegan.

At the heart of the national squad is a team filled with talented individual players. What the side has lacked is a manager who is able to fuse the team together and play a formation and strategy that’s capable of winning the massive games.

What Capello brings to England is transparency. An ability to see right through the England team and finally judge them for what they are. Time will tell, but we’ll get to see within six months whether they’re great pretenders now in decline, or a nation of talented players that have been held back by inferior coaches.