England, who played very unimaginative football in the World Cup, continued their poor run of form in their European 2008 Qualifying matches this past week.

While their (2-0) defeat on Wednesday in Croatia unfolded in a bitter and caustic manner, the real shock was their (0-0) draw at home in England to minnows, Macedonia.

England’s failure to score at home in this fixture is complete sacrilege, and for a National team that boasts some of the highest performing and highest paid players in the world, the manner, or lack their of, in which England performed surely points to a National enigma.

Certainly an identity crisis riddles the English team, and the appointment of an English manager, in this case Steve McClaren, has done little to put an English identity back into the squad.

If the English National team were to play in a particular English style, then you would see a National side applying constant pressure, going forward with complete conviction, and simply just playing until their hearts bleed. However, when you watch England, you usually see a conservative side that is clearly organized, but absolutely faceless in their pursuit of victory.

It was not to long ago when the English press and players were boasting a “no fear” demeanor with some really outrageous and immature claims coming out of the English camp. Clearly the hype and euphoric praise of the English stars in the EPL had given the English mentality a false hope that they are just now coming to realize: even the departure of David Beckham was spun to be a necessity for the overall good of the English team.

While the English still played boring and unimpressive soccer with David in the side, at least Becks could get the English on the board.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 2:48 am and is filed under Soccer World, England, Rick Wall (Head Editor). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.