England lick their wounds, what’s our future?

With the World cup well and truly over, the inevitable void of nothingness is filled by the seemingly endless reports on “what went wrong” and “how we can change”.

England on paper had a disastrous world cup, with no wins and 1 draw to their name. Thankfully other world cup results sidelined England’s “woeful” performance [Mirror].

[BBC]

I, like many others, watched this game and honestly couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It wasn’t just a win it was a dissection of the home nation.  The clinical passes, clean finishes made Brazil look like school boys. Germany then went on, quite deservedly, to win the world cup.

This overall success has been placed on the way the German’s restructured their team training and coaching system. A snap shot of the coaching numbers and you see why.

United Kingdom: 2,769 (1:812*)
Germany: 34,970 (1:150*)
Spain: 23,995 (1:17*)

 *Ratio of Players to coaches.

What is happened now is rather interesting. The questions being asked are along the lines of “How can we be more like Germany?” How did they change? It is an impressive argument and a story of reflection, hard decisions and tough calls.

The Germans rebuilding was put in place after 2000 Euro when they didn’t get past the group stages and finished bottom of their group.  This humiliation and copulation rattled the country to its core; Deuschland were beaten. The rebuilding of the nation’s pride and success lay in the hands of the next generation [Guardian].

Then starting from the ground up they ensure the coaching, training and support was there for the countries home talent. This has ultimately led to them winning the world cup.

The press keep asking can we do what the Germans did? [BBC] The question of England taking this route is hard. The mindset of “doing what Germany are doing” in my eyes the wrong goal. It has taken years of hard graft and dedication to change Germany.

It will take just as long to change England’s methods and by that point Germany would be years further on we wont be there.

The goal should be “"We have to be one step ahead, not one step behind." Stuart Lancaster Let us, England, be the trend setters. Then we might have a chance of catching up.

The English rugby team did a similar thing[Telegraph 2003]. 

Now to have this attitude “let us be the trend setters” in it is quite dangerous as it does assume as certain amount of bullishness and arrogance. Too much of this can lead to disaster.

So what we want is confidence to change and belief that we can make a difference happen. England is the lowest ranked it has been for years, so if it fails. What difference would it really make?

Is Sport Entertainment?

Sport is big business and a major revenue stream for companies in the Entertainment sector.  The revenue from broadcasting football, the highlights and computer games can’t be underestimated.

These companies and spectators alike thrive on the drama and entertainment sport brings.

Sports sometimes have their rules changed to make it more “entertaining” for the spectator. The introduction of head to head was one way of making archery more palatable for TV.

Is this a good thing? Well generally yes it is. Wider audience generally means a greater potential for grass roots participation and subsequent funding. Archery is lucky in that we get a boost in participation off the back of big blockbuster films/TV series. The Katnis effect if you will (NYtimes)

It is strange then, when you see in the news of a high tempo sport having concerns with a manager’s tactics for being un-entertaining and “too defensive” like criticism laid against Morinio with the 0-2 win against Liverpool.  

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Yes it does sound unbelievable, a manager who won a critical game was criticised for being boring[1]. So was it “boring” or skillful for Marinio to choose tactics which were ideal for the situation? The answer is both and it is not just Football that decision made by teams lead to an in-entertaining encounter[2].  

In other sports, like F1, team exerts orders on their drivers, telling them to pull over to allow a teammate past[3].  They do this for a number of reasons, the most controversial of which is to enable a driver to get more points so they can challenge in the overall championship.   

A lot of praise was given to the Mercedes F1 team for not enacting team orders and allowing their drivers to race in the Bahrain GP[4]. One false move and both drivers would have been off the track, destroying a massive advantage in the overall competition.  

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The correct choice would be to allow one driver to win and tell the other to back off. They didn’t and the sport is entertaining because of it.  

There has been an occasion where two high profile teams been thrown out of a competition for not using there "best efforts" to win[5].

The looser of the game would have faced a lesser skilled (on paper) opponent. Therefore it was right option to loose. Both teams quite literally followed this tactic, it led to so many complaints that a number of players were thrown out[6].  

So back to the football game, Liverpool, before this match, have been rated as one of the most lethal attacking teams this season. Chelsea on the other hand has the greatest defensive record this season[7]. With that into account Morinio was unlikely to play an attacking game. It was therefore the correct choice to go defensive, playing to his team’s strength.  

This does not make for “entertaining” viewing, the spectators were expecting a boxing like clash of epic proportions. In the end they got a clinical game, with Chelsea wielding the knife.  

So it was right choice and the right outcome for Chelsea. For the spectator, well sorry guys sport is a cruel mistress.