What a tournament.... Struggled the first game, utter drivel the 2nd, scraped through the third.... just about clawing our way out of the Group stage .... and straight into the hands of the Hun who were all setup for a massacre of Paschendale proportions
So what went wrong with some of the best players in the world? Was it the players, the manager, the fact they couldn'ttheir wives (their own Terry
).
Maybe it's the fact that some of the players look better than they are in Club football as they are surrounded by professional players from other countries, although that isn't really the case .... is it?
The players just never seemed to be really interested apart from one match, and we only just won that one by 1-0
So it's the players who need to take most of the blame as it is actually their job to score ... that may surprise some folk who think it's all the managers job but under the rules of football, unless he's a player/manager and is in the first 11, he can't score for them
Talking of the manager though, yet another has failed us. £6M a year ... and for what? A part-time job? Easy money if you can get it, but even a comatose patient wouldn't have managed the players any worse
It was like watching the Sven/McClown period all again, same players, same players out of position (why oh why do they do that?). Same useless tactics, and slow to change when things are not going right. In fact he reminded me of Benitez, so I nearly launched the TV into orbit
.... renegotiated his contract before the distaste.
So now I come to the goal that never was ..... I hope Slap Bladder (I can never spell the FIFA's chief muppet) realized that a multi-Billion $$$ industry, watched by 100's Millions of people needs to be a little less error prone. We already have goal line technology, the TV companies supplied it so we all could see within seconds it was a goal, and it appears on;y one person in the whole of the professional football game is against using technology.... you guessed it.... Self Blubber
And it wasn't just that game, two in one day. Mexico v Argentina turned into a farce when a goal that was offside TWICE, was given as a goal, and shown to every Tom, Dick & Lesbian in the ground. So the crowd, managers, players, even the officials knew it wasn't a goal, but it still stood..... and yet the replay was over within 15 seconds ... the hassle with the officials took 2-3 minutes to sort out.
The argument that technology would slow a game is a dead duck. You simply use it for goal/penalty decisions. In fact every time a goal is scored, they check was it offside, did a foul take place, did it cross the line? All that can be done in 10-15 seconds. It takes longer to kick-off.
So after those two debacles you could clearly see it completely changed both games, and along with the embarrassment of the French getting in something needs to be done before the next tournament starts in 2 years.
... and finally... how thedo we change those at the top of FIFA? It reminds me of the 'all boys together' of the old Jockey Club we got rid of last century.