Brian Glanville on Trevor Brooking

I completely agree with Brian Glanvilles’ comments on Trevor Brooking’s recent assessment of England. Here’s what he had to say:

From Trevor Brooking, whom I’ve always admired so much as a player and who would I’m sure have made an excellent England manager, a very strange statement which seems oddly illogical.

“I thought there was a lot of quality football in Euro 2008 and the fact we didn’t qualify was almost a reality check. We don’t want to go from that to saying we need to be in the last four of the World Cup.” Why ever not?

If the Greeks with a team of virtual unknowns outside Hellas can so splendidly and surprisingly win the 2004 Euros. If the Danes can come virtually off the beaches at the last moment to replace Yugoslavia and win them in 1992. If Spain can in the 2008 qualifiers lose 3-2 in Belfast against Northern Ireland, why on earth should England not win in 2012, let alone reach the semi finals, or do as much in the ensuing World Cup?

Trevor knows as well as anyone that one of soccer’s supreme glories is its sheer unpredictability perhaps above all at international level. That England didn’t get to the 2008 finals was a reality check if at all on the supreme stupidity of appointing a disastrous manager such as Steve McClaren.

Defeat in Croatia where his absurd 3-5-2 tactics, quite alien to his players, led to defeat; let alone the awful error by Paul Robinson. Sticking to Robinson when the goalkeeper was so plainly going through a crisis of confidence. Belatedly blooding a successor in Scott Carson who, nervous and internationally inexperienced, gave away that awful goal against Croatia at Wembley.

Yet England beat Russia comfortably at Wembley, the Russians crashed ignominiously in Israel, leaving England with what seemed a free passage to the final, and the best they could then do against feeble Andorra was to sneak through 1-0. I’ve no idea whether England will even qualify for the next World Cup. After Fabio Capello’s bizarre beginning, his severe and troubling case of Beckhamitis, who can say? But to warn us at this remote stage that it would be wrong to say they’d need to be in the last four is simply illogical.

Who, for another example, would have put any money for Turkey to go as far as they did in the Euros; and with a severely weakened team, to give the Germans such a fight in the semi finals? Having got rid, but all too late, of the Wally with the Brolly, hoping that Beckham can at last be made to rest on whatever laurels he has left, a World Cup semi final need not be chimerical. Always assuming England can qualify.