Motty's day nine preview
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Motty's day nine preview (UK users only)
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South Africa 2010 will be John Motson's 10th World Cup with BBC Sport. John will be filing regular video reports from Cape Town, offering expert insight and opinion as well as recalling his own fond memories of previous tournaments. You can watch World Cup Motty on the BBC Sport website and the Red Button. John will also be using Twitter. You can follow him @worldcupmotty.
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Football headlines
- Norway 0-1 England
Roy Hodgson kicks off his England managerial reign with a 1-0 victory over Norway in a warm-up match for Euro 2012. - England worry over Barry injury
Midfielder Gareth Barry is expected to undergo a scan on a groin injury on Sunday as he emerges as a serious injury concern ahead of England's Euro 2012 campaign. - Huddersfield up after shoot-out
Huddersfield are promoted after Sheffield United goalkeeper Steve Simonsen misses the decisive penalty in the League One play-off final at Wembley.
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Comments
Good evening Motty - has it occured to you too that ALL the major European territories are playing poorly because.....their top flight league teams are STUFFED to the gunnels with foreign players. The Latin American countries do not have that situation which is why I believe the Cup will be won by either Brazil or Argentina. They are more home grown boys available. Arsenal e.g. have ONE Englsih player and he wasn't even selected! If things don't change soon we can give up any hope of an English win ever again. My thinking would be bring in a rule that EVERY premier league club has to have at least 50% English (British?) players on the team sheet. That'll bring up the new talent.
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Netherlands v Japan 3-0
Ghana v Austrailia 2-0
Cameroon v Denmark 2-1
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if the european teams are suffering from influx of foreign players into their home leagues, one w ill wonder what the african teams could be suffering from?
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argentina and brazill player play in foreign leagues mostly
so there goes your argument
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Novscotianbbc here again. Again I feel that the commentators are a bit harsh on your English national team. England are still undefeated, which is not usually the case at this stage of World Cups. No one can say that bad teams are at WC finals, so no one (apart from one England player, if press reports are to be believed) expected Algeria to be easy or to lay down and invite England to score. So, English supporters, "nil desperandum" (as Scipio Africanus said when Rome tied 0-0 with Carthage in one of the earlier WCs), England are showing a marked improvement on their early WCs efforts (apart, of course, from that one effort last century).
NovascoatianBBC
))tacitus er d w
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@Thinkbox
While your point is valid re: foreign players in European leagues, I'm a bit tired of people always pointing to Arsenal as one of the biggest examples of the problem. Yes, their first team only has one English regular, but I'd point you to their younger players such as Wilshire, Simpson, Lansbury, Bartley, Eastmond et al. They represent a huge percentage of the England U19, 17 etc etc teams. Also, don't forget that players like Devid Bentley are products of the Arsenal system. Although it always seems easy to point at Arsenal, statistically Liverpool's squad have the highest percentage of foreigners in EUROPE, let along the EPL.
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@captKrimbo
I literally just signed up to defend Arsenal and to point to the talented English younsters coming through the ranks
well done
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Morning Mr Motson,
Yes like the majority of fans i'm wondering if the influx of players from around the world is killing the UK game ? I fear it is .
Let me throw a little light onto last nights performance by England
PLAYER POWER The players didn't want to play Capello's way and you seen how they played . I believe they got through the qualifiers with 442 but they realise to progress now in the world cup you need more, they wont come out openly and say Fabio your wrong to play Gerrard out of position ,leave players like Joe Cole on the bench ? send good match turning players home like Adams , cling onto unfit players like King as good as he is, cling onto slow central defenders instead of letting young bloods who have played so well all season have there chance like Hart and Dawson , what's he playing at the Guy is stubborn ,far to ridgid , Why don't they have a go through Pierce , he is basically a 442 man as well . So what happens , Fabio said I cannot understand it , how the team played ? Well I honestly feel the game was played last night against Algeria to show there disgust at leaving poor Green in the dark until an hour before the game and bringing back James, he deserved better, I think it was player revolt , i really do , the players way of showing Capello there feelings and disagreement with his methods Blow the English fans , we can't outright tell Capello what a twithe is, but we will show him on the pitch his methods arn't working , and I feel that is what we seen last night , I truly do .I rest my case , yours ScouseAde.
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England is not playing poorly - it's playing up to it's potential.
Guess why more than 65% of the players in the Premier League are foreign?
Are you really surprised?
OK-then it's alright to boo that overpaid boer-Rooney, uh and Fat Frank Lampard!
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So the players feel that they know best, i think that its all too easy to blame the manager, who guess what is the manager, weho is very experienced, was bought in by the FA to manage the squad and did so by topping their qualification group !! Hows about the overpaid and pampered primadonnas simply cant and wont gel together as a team because they dont want to, because thats not the way i play or thats not my position, or i might get my boots dirty................ it doesnt take much to play out of a normal position if you are a talented sports person........but then perhaps these guys aren't after all. Perhaps they should look to Algeria and the USA for committment to the game !
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Capello "We lost too many passes, it was not the same team that I know, the team I see when they train,"
Unfortunately, Matey, your team are practicing with equally poor footballers in training i.e. themselves. Perhaps they could employ a team of school boys as opposition to these highly paid, lowly motivated, "Elite" sportsmen. Better still the local Pub Team could show them how it's done with a belly full of swill.
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Well I woke up this morning feeling jaded but it's not over yet, so I'm gonna get right behind the lads and spur them on to a win. I don't think Slovenia will be an easy game by any stretch but I do believe between themselves they'll sort it out and then break our hearts later on in the competition. Good luck!
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In 1966 Alf Ramsey picked the best team, not the best players, and to hell with his media critics. Examples
Hunt not Greaves
Cohen not Armfield
Charlton not Labone
Capello, like his predecessors, is picking the team that any casual fan would pick. For £6m a year we want some added value. Perhaps David Dunn would be better / less tired for England than Lampard or Gerrard. Zamora may be better than any of the more famous forwards. Capellos job to find this out. No evidence that he has even tried anything unpredictable.
After 2 years we are still second guessing the identity of the goalkeeper - as are the players.
It is such a shambles that we will probably win it.
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Jume 23rd 2014 Mottys World Cup Memory. Capello finally ditches 442 and England thrash Slovenia on their way to the World Cup Final. Wouldnt that be good to hear? But unfortunatley as likely as a Heskey hat trick.
Netherlands 3 Japan 0
Ghana 1 Austrailia 0
Cameroon 0 Denmark 0
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Hello Motty,
Does it concern you that when Capello speaks it is garbled nonsense? To deny it is to bury our heads in the sand. His English is simply not good enough to get his points across let alone to inspire or discuss finer tactical points. The England manager seems to have been chosen on the same basis as TV companies select football pundits - a big name who can't speak English.
Having said that, we went out without playing well 4 years ago, we failed to qualify for the European championships and yesterday we were no better than 2000/1 shots Algeria (we are still 10 to 1 - what a joke). If it had been a boxing fight I am not even sure we would have won on points.
Over the last 4 years, we have had 3 different managers but the same players have produced the same sort of performances. When did England last play really well in a match in a major championship. The Group stages in 2004 were ok but we fizzled out. In 2000 and 2002 we were poor. I think you need to go back a football generation to 1998 for a team that even threatened to inspire the country.
We didn't realise how lucky we were 4 years ago - this is the same team with the same incompetence but without Beckham's free kicks to try to nick a fortunate win.
The nature of football is that things could turn around on Wednesday and we may scramble past Slovenia and all will be forgiven by some. The problem is there is no pleasure in watching this team, nothing to quicken the heart or raise the spirit. There is no magic solution and scrambling to the quarter finals would only cover up the problems.
I still remember the Danes from 1986 and they got knocked out in the first knock out round but were fantastic in the group. No-one will want to remember this England side and in 15 years we will talk of Gerrard and Rooney and the kids will ask what did they achieve. The answer, well we thought Rooney was a world beater but actually he couldn't control the ball against Algeria - harsh but true!!
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@Squirmy comment - actually the argument is valid beacause my main point is that with all the top Latin American players playing in Europe it leaves the home grown teams empty to be filled by home grown players. They rarely import players as the money isn't big enough. See what I mean? Natural internal growth.
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Can we stop the smoke screens of formations and number of overseas players. Most players failed to demonstrate the basics of passing and ball control. These guys have been playing at the highest levels for over 11 months without a break. They have been burnt out by the rediculous number of games played.
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I,ll repeat the comments elsewhere on this thread, namely - there are too few top class English players in the premiership. It's a terrific league, but most of the star turns are foreign.
I can't think of one English player who plies his trade in Europe either. We have the same problem in Scotland, but worse. The best that Scottish teams can manage are assorted Bosmans and guys who no one has heard of. Having said that, one of the best players on the park last night was Majic Bougherra of Rangers. He had a great game, and probaly added so much to his worth that Rangers will be forced to sell him to help balance the books.
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Novascotian: We can be as harsh as we like. This is the fourth World Cup England have qualified for in a row and I have seen all of them. This is the first time in those four tournaments that we have failed to win 'either' of our opening two matches.
ScouseAde: Your theory is plausible but it suggests that the players are morons! Fabio's methods saw us through the best qualifying campaign that I can remember - why the hell lose faith in him now?
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It's no use complaining about the number of overseas players in the English game. The BEST English players play in the Premiership, and there's plenty of opportunity for others to develop in the lower leagues. If they're good enough they will step up.
The problem with England is a mental one. These are very good players, but somehow they loose their confidence when they pull on an England shirt. No recent England manager has been able to address this issue and from current evidence Capello is no different. From post-match interviews it sounds as if he hasn't a clue what to try next.
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@Thinkbox - such a rule indicates that such a talent pool currently exists. It doesn't.
Instead we'd see more Championship players brought into the EPL, simply because they qualified under 50% rule, with the corresponding lack of quality. This would be made worse as EPL teams stopped performing in Europe and the better UK players moved abroad to chase Champions League success.
We'd be at SPL levels of quality in no time.
We need to boost the amount of talent out there before even considering such a rule, and that will take plenty of time as UK football needs restructuring from the ground up.
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Here is a radical theory for you all......
How about the fact that England are simply not as good as you and the media made them out to be?
Last night was nearly as bad as watching Scotland play!
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scouseade,
Player revolt?
This is the World Cup!
These overpaid prima donnas need to wake up and do what they are PAID to do!
Dry their eyes and grow up!
The "under seven" attitude has no place here!
Wayne Rooney, please note!
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For years you've all had your blinkers on with your 'god given right' and your "1966 all over again". Last night it wasn't just the rest of Britain laughing at you, It was the rest of the world. Win the World Cup, ha, if you were playing in my back garden, I'd draw the blinds. Not Capellos fault - you're just not good enough.
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Hi Motty
I have often wondered what makes people choose teams like the current English team.
When you read that players like Theo Walcott who are available and playing well are left behind for players that are getting on in years who as this world cup has shown us are not up to the job.
I am also mystified as to why David beckham is sitting on the benches and on his coat is the English FA`s coat of arms.
Surely this sort of thing is only used by official personnel. I noticed that during the matches the tv cameras frequently swung unto him he also was seen jumping up and down whilst Fabio Cappello was sitting down looking down in the dumps. Could you possibly tell me why he is there and who is paying for him to be there
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Thinkbox has it ABSOLUTELY spot on. Also, think about the French team that won in 1998 and 2000, plenty of their players getting out into foreign leagues as well, leaving space for the next crop to push through in the domestic game. Well versed in the different styles of play from european nations and no strangers to foreign fields. Is it any coincidence that the current World Champs (Italy) have a cap on how many foreign players you can field?
Dave Manchester; i disagree with what you say. more english players moving abroad would surely help the national and domestic game. Think of Ince, Lineker, Gascoigne, McManaman, Platt, Walker, Beckham. we can't continue to let short term economic benefit to clubs ruin the prospects of a nation that loves football.
We won't see England win anything until the Premier League is fixed.
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i don't personally feel that foreign players playing in the english league is a negative whatsoever. they seem to expose the lack of quality of the english players and of the culture of british football in general which, in the long run will hopefully serve as a kick up the backside. perhaps the attitude is already begining to change where clubs don't just take on the big, athletic players where they can thrive on full sized pitches/goals and ignore the smaller kids that show genuine skill and creativity. it'll take ten years to tell.
as for england, it seems as though the squad and capello were compatible throughout the qualifiers as the players were able to return to their homes after a few days. with the intensity under capello for a much longer time combined with the pressure every england team will always feel, no wonder the team are putting in such uptight performances. they need someone who they feel will look out for them and not someone like capello for whom showing enjoyment probably shows a lack of respect.
i wouldn't be suprised if a few of them quit the international scene after the end of their tournament.
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for post 24. you have a point. england aren't anywhere near as good as the hype would suggest. no one should've needed to wait till the world cup before realising that wayne rooney and lionel messi don't belong in the same conversation.
with the overblown media and public blind enthusiasm, i understand yours, and most others dislike for the english national team and apparently england in general but we do not all share that same attitude.
still, i don't know where you're from but it just sounds like more blind hatred. i'm sure yours is a far greater country than ours.
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@Tim
You misunderstand my point, if EPL teams will be forced to play a minimum 50% homegrown players, and all the better ones then go abroad to play in the Champions League (we haven't a large enough reservoir of talent for EPL teams to compete in Europe under those conditions), what level of player will be left in the EPL?
When the Rooneys are playing in Spain and Italy, we'll be left with the DJ Campbells. How does that improve the domestic game?
The numbers just don't add up - assuming each EPL team needs 10 UK players, that's 200 EPL quality UK players required. Now where exactly are they going to come from? Where is all this untapped talent going to suddenly appear from?
The unpleasant fact is there isn't enough decent UK - let alone English - talent out there to instigate such a rule.
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Drop Rooney to the bench for the Slovenia game. His injuries have taken too much of a toll and he doesn't have 90 quality minutes in him at the moment. His world class edge is temporarily out of order. All the press coverage about being up there alongside Messi is now hanging like an albatross around his and England's neck. Changing the formation around him by bringing Gerrard further up is not going to work at the moment. Capello doesn't want to admit to this because there is no proven plan B. Capello is hoping that Rooney will recoup his form of three months ago and continues to build the team around him. It's not going to happen quickly enough. For the Slovenia game, start with a 4-3-3 of Defoe, Crouch and Cole, Gerrard, Lampard, Barry, Johnson, Terry, Dawson, Cole and Hart. Don't bother with the headless chickens of Wright Phillips and Lenon unless absolutely necessary. Rooney may improve for the knock out stages, if we get that far. We have very little spirit or desire at the moment and this must in some way be attributed to the team's over reliance on our under-performing talisman. Take away that reliance on Rooney and we might see others standing taller. It's not the best attacking solution, but it's surely got to be worth a try.
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The quality debate is entirely valid, and needs addressing when the competition is over, but Wednesday is more pressing to my mind.
Intriguing as a player revolt might be (don't we love a conspiracy theory?) I think we're looking at a mixture of all of the above - a long and demanding season, concentrated pressure of the media, the massive expectations of the public and some really disappointingly poor, inflexible management decisions.
We are, sadly, used to below par performances from this generation of England "stars"; what really hurts is that Capello isn't the man many of us thought him to be: bold, decisive, perceptive. There was something so very obviously wrong with the England mid-field last night - i.e. no-one was playing in it - that is was painfully obvious a major change was needed. Lampard contributed virtually nothing, again, and it was actually quite disturbing to see Gerrard disintegrating front of our eyes. Check his body language in the "highlights" as he walked about the middle of the field and the play passed him by. He looked shocked, like he had been in an accident. Rooney retreated to cover the vacuum in the centre of the park and joined the rest in trying to score the miracle goal that would bring us victory and make everything all right again by shooting from 30 yards out.
It was obvious to all and sundry that a new ingredient needed adding to the mix,(the tricksy, darting Joe Cole for preference)that big, brave decisions were necessary, but all we got were a series of like-for-like substitutions. The manager has, in a sense, missed his moment. The time to introduce new blood was in the second half; now, major changes before the last(?)game will look like the desperate clutching of straws and I am afraid that Capello does care what people might think of him and might see this as weak indecisiveness rather than the strength to grasp the nettle and tell it like it is.
I hope not. With the whole squad inhaling vast amounts of coffee, and playing as a team rather than an assortment of strangers, there is still time for England to put this woeful performance behind them.
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In response again to Dave Manchester, I hear what you're saying and I think I understand your point but I just basically disagree with your assertion that we haven't got the talent in the country. We certainly have the potential there, and that is (I think) where your worries lie. In your scenario, these players (200 of EPL quality) have to be 'found' or as you put it 'suddenly appear'.
My point is rather that these players don't 'suddenly appear', they need to be grown, nurtured if you will (yes, this happened even with Rooney's prodigious talent) and this takes time and investment in the latent abilities that are present within England - see Arsenal's youth academy and what it promises to turn out from England's U18s, U19s, U21s etc.
The easy way out though is to import talent from the continent and elsewhere at a short term cost but with long term detriment to the game. The German answer to this dilemma was to enforce academy set-ups at their bundesliege clubs and this has had a positive impact on their national team (notwithstanding a rubbish ref and a blip against serbia). So I guess I would agree with you that I don't under ANY circumstances want a reduction in quality to SPL level but I think this WON'T happen as long as Football is taken proper care of and we introduce the right measures.
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M o t t y,
Why has M A R A D O N A been ridiculed by so many pundits and written off as a manager ? To me he has shown the way. He has embraced this tournament as a manager in the same way he did as a player. It`s a one off tournament, and those who dare to be brave and to be extra ordinary and show some humility are rewarded.
He is a wonderful man manager, and an inspirational figure, and the pundits will all change their views if ARGENTINA win it, so I would really like to hear your views on the way he has united the team now ? ARGENTINA have always had great players, and a great team, and yet only won it twice so why do we In England expect ?
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