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Camden New Journal - CROW by RICHARD OSLEY and PIP WROE
Published: 15 October 2009

Internet? I’m still searching for reasons to watch England

IF you were silly enough to pay for internet coverage of an England match then you probably deserved what you got.
A load of football faecal matter (note to self: use thesaurus more often to avoid swear words). The Ukraine match was a classic example of why supporting England at the moment is so hard. We all want them to win the World Cup. We all love the World Cup, it’s the only time we will happily sit down and watch Paraguay vs Bulgaria. But right now, who in the current England team makes you want to whip out the credit card and order web coverage?
At the moment, I couldn’t even spare the price of a pint to watch them on a pub screen. Cole? Ugh. Rooney? Ugh. Terry? Ugh. Lampard? Ugh. Since Theo got injured, I can’t think of one of them that comes across as a nice guy. The 1-0 defeat shows how detached the team is to the fans. If me or you – or even Pip Wroe – were out there we would have run our hearts out. We’d have lost 25-0, but we’d have put the effort in. For the players who got the privilege of putting on an England shirt on Saturday, it seems there has to be something at stake before they give us their ‘A’ game. What else would explain the mistakes by Rio Ferdinand and own-goal scorer Ashley Cole?

WHEN Fabio Capello took the reins he promised the end of the lazy, indifferent, wag-addled England team that we all knew so well.
There is a 99 per cent chance that after one day of Capello’s leadership Frank Lampard made a statement to the press along the lines of: “Mr Capello is the greatest manager I’ve ever worked with, me and JT that is, obviously. Even in training there’s just a much greater level of professionalism… the lads this, the lads that…”
He’s just so loyal that Lampard.
Capello’s new policy of picking players based on club form was heralded as a master stroke rather than an obvious starting point and everything looked rosy for a while. But now the purity has gone. Emile Heskey still makes the starting line up despite scoring two goals in 2009. He has maintained a tantalising scoring rate of a goal every 1,000 minutes for his entire England career. Rio Ferdinand has returned with his trade-mark, laid-back, style and his brother’s ability, although this won’t last long. And for some inexplicable reason, Robert Green has now snuck his unnervingly sad face in between the sticks. What’s wrong with David James? He’s still limber and spry and when you look in his eyes you don’t feel like crying. Come on Fabs.

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