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SMITH ON SOCCER - Inquisition later - now it's Big Telly on for every game
NOT another football revolution. Every four years or so we fall down in a fit of national self-loathing, recrimination and scapegoating because our football team has failed again.
This time it's no different although there is a fundamental issue that has to be considered first.
Yes we need to coach young players better, have more sport in schools, the FA's National Team HQ needs to be built in Burton, a winter break, and a unified approach that puts the fortunes of the national team at the top of the game's priorities.
But most of all we need to know what happened within the England camp over the last month.
They started to look mardy and miserable in the friendly against Japan and they just got more and more browned off.
All the structural and preparational changes in the world won't tell us why the team that qualified as a hard-working and efficient collective was reduced to the rabble humiliated by Germany.
That's about personalities, situations and discipline.
*Now the 'Kitchen Games' are out of the way the World Cup starts proper.
They are the ones you watch in the kitchen while you're doing something else.
You luxuriate in the thrill of football being on ALL the time but you don't really take much notice. If you do sit and watch on widescreen you soon realise they aren't that rivetting - England's games apart.
But they are all gone now.
With games like Brazil v Holland and Germany v Argentina, it's Big Telly time to see players like the Brazilian Robinho rather than the one who played for City, Villa of Spain and Lionel Messi.
Messi is the opposite of the kid everyone knew in school who was a football genius but smoked and drank his way into a pub team from the age of 14. Nature blessed this shuffling young Argentinian and he stayed on the narrow path to greatness. Not sure how much fun he'd be in the pub but you can't have everything.
That gnarled look, hard jawline and piercing eyes - Aquaphibians from Stingray or Fabio Capello? Aquaphibians were the guards for Titan and agent X20 in the 60s TV show. If Fabio's team's shooting is anything to go by Marineville is safe. Nothing much will happen in the next half-hour.
Got a view? Leave a comment below.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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