If the Martians had landed last week and picked up a tabloid, they might have been forgiven for thinking that Steve McClaren was exceptionally stupid.
The truth is – as Derby fans know – McClaren is one of the more astute and knowledgeable football coaches around. If it weren’t for him Derby would have never done so well when we were last in the Premiership and it is no accident that our decline started after he left.
Yet he could not defeat Russia – or at least hold onto a lead against Russia. But the media frenzy hides an uncomfortable reality. We just don’t have enough good English footballers and this goes back several years. In fact I personally think Sir Alf did all of us an enormous disservice by winning the World Cup. It was a triumph of tactics over technical skill. So it allowed the media to continually blind all of us to the real awful truth – the technical skills of English players are crap.
Even at Derby – no-one is going to claim that our international players have the technique that some Europeans and South Americans have. Darren Moore – bless him - is our equivalent of Sol Campbell. Big, strong and not too clever on the footwork.
Want to argue? Just watch what Hiddink did last week. All he had to do was to close down Ferdinand, and the two full backs leaving Sol free who can’t pass at all or carry it forward a la Beckenbauer. The hapless Robinson was left with Hobson’s choice – to roll the ball out to Sol or boot it upfield. To whom? Two small people – Owen and Rooney. Makes defending a doddle when that happens and what do we do? Bring on Crouch and again we lose out as we revert to Route One - a sure-fire recipe for failure against top class technical teams.
The disgusting media frenzy also allows us to conveniently forget the salient fact that Russia has actually produced some decent footballing teams. It is a form of racism that assumes that countries much larger than England are expected to be footballing fodder for our national team.
But let’s get back to the reality. When I was at school, the big boys got selected. The little lads with more skill didn’t. The failure of English football starts at that level. And it’s repeated all the way upwards. Even John Terry cannot be compared to Paolo Maldini – and I admire JT immensely. But honestly, if you had a choice between Cannavaro and Ferdinand – who would you choose? C’mon, it’s a no-brainer!
Dmitri Kharine the Russian goalie who played for Chelsea once famously commented that the average English footballer was technically limited. And no wonder with a heritage of keeping the ball away from the players so by the time Saturday comes, the players would be hungry for it! Thankfully those days have gone but we still have too many managers who think having a forty five minute kickabout on a cold February morning on a frozen ground is a good training session as Sven-Göran found when he came to “learn” from us.
That’s why our Academy is so important. We’ve produced Huddlestone and Barnes so far both of whom have genuine technical skills but we need more. If not just for Derby County’s sake, then for our national side also. Otherwise we will always have the media baying for blood whoever is brave enough to try and manage the national side.
On second thoughts, maybe McClaren is stupid – who would want to try and make a successful side out of a very limited pool of decent players while all the way, there’s the newspaper equivalent of Madame Defarge cackling and knitting away waiting for the guillotine to fall when the inevitable failure comes?