Booooooo!

Later today England will face up against Costa Rica in their final Group D game. However following the defeats to Italy and Uruguay we already ready know that straight after the match England will be going home from the World Cup. As such I think it's a good time to start the post-mortem.

The main problem is a systemic hatred of football. I know it almost sounds silly in this day and age to blame the British class system but the upper class don't really do sport. On the rare occasions they do indulge it's only in genteel games such lawn tennis or croquet. As far as they're concerned football is merely something the working classes have made up as an excuse to shut down the factories on Saturday afternoons.

However the upper classes have manged to observe - as Socrates pointed out - that football is a team game in which a group of talented individuals working as one for a common cause can achieve great things together. Unfortunately a nation made up of individuals only out for themselves and clambering over each other for every little scrap is much easier to control. So when the ruling classes do allow the masses to engage in sport they prefer them to follow ones that place great emphasis on the individual such as tennis or athletics.

Then there is the small matter of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Back when Britain first bid to host the 2018 tournament they did so almost entirely safe in the knowledge that Russia would win because they had the best bid. However a little bit of friendly competition helps raise standards and should have won Britain allies for future bids. Unfortunately during the bidding process the UK had a coup and the new regime took bidding for the 2018 World Cup to mean that they had a divine right to host the 2018 World Cup. So ever since Russia was awarded the 2018 tournament the UK has pretty much been at open war with football's governing body FIFA and the entire concept of football.

Finally this World Cup clashes with the Wimbledon Tennis fortnight which for Britain's wannabe upper classes is the pinnacle of the sporting calender. It is also an event that Britain's ruling classes get to entirely control. As such they are deeply jealous that the World Cup would steal their moment in the spotlight.

The problem is that not even the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK/North Korea) formally boycott the World Cup. So since early 2012 Britain has been going to great efforts first to make sure that England failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup and then when they did (under duress) make sure that they got knocked out at the earliest possible opportunity.

The main part of this effort was the appointment of Roy Hodgson as England manager. Hodgson is a man who has had an unremarkable career both as a professional player and as a manager. In fact his sole achievement in the game appears to be helping Switzerland get out of the group stage of the 1994 World Cup on goal difference before being knocked out in the first knock-out game by Spain who were still firmly out in the long footballing wilderness before they first won a major trophy in 2008. I suppose you could even go so far to say that Hodgson's sole qualification for the England job was that he was born in my native Croydon and started his career Crystal Palace- the local club. Hodgson has even spent most of his time in Brazil wandering around the training camp looking lost in the hope that someone will mistake him for my father.

Either as part of this great master plan of failure or as a result of his own lack of ability Hodgson completely screwed up picking the squad of players to go to the tournament. Although the England squad has some undoubtedly talented players its average age is 26 and most of that is made up of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. The rest of them are aged around 21-22 and some like Luke Shaw and Raheem Sterling are under 20. Although football is certainly a young man's game players often don't fully mature until their mid-20's and Tim Cahill who plays centre-forward for Australia and regularly turns out for Everton is 34.

This lack of maturity and experience is a particular problem for defensive players for whom the game is less about their ability to sprint up and down the pitch and much more their ability to read the game and the opposing players in order to be able to predict what is going to happen next. As such the critical mistake Hodgson made was to drop Ashley Cole (33) in favour of Phil Jones (22). This created a massive defensive hole down England's left side and robbed the team of a potential spine made up of older, more experienced players such as Cole, Rooney (28) and Frank Lampard (36) or Steven Gerrard (34).

This defensive hole then totally limited the potential formations that England could play because they had to play at least four mid-fielders in order to protect the gap. However Hodgson then went on to completely screw up the classic and basic 4-4-2 formation. What he should have done is play Adam Lallana (26) on the left side of mid-field in his natural position. Either Lampard or Gerrard would then have played in the centre alongside one of the young attacking players - of which there are many - with Sterling (18) playing on the right.

However it seemed more important to Hodgson to ruin Wayne Rooney's reputation by playing him totally out of position on the left-wing with Daniel Sturridge (24) and Danny Welbeck (23) cancelling each other out in the centre forward positions. After being challenged on this following the Italy game Hodgson simply decided to ruin Welbeck's reputation instead by playing him on the left and moving Rooney to the centre. This massively improved England's attack but Welbeck kept refusing to play in position meaning that the team structure collapsed and the England were left charging around all chasing the ball in the attacking half of the pitch like some junior school playground match.

Of course if Hodgson was desperate for Rooney, Sturridge and Welbeck all to play he could have picked a 4-5-1 formation that would have added extra cover to the defensive hole on the left. Lallana would have lined up on the left with say Barkley on the inside left, Gerrard in the centre, Sturridge on the inside right and Sterling on the outside right. This would have put Rooney and Welbeck as centre-forwards with Sturridge and Barkley charging in as the flow of the game allowed. Sterling is of course one of those players who is so annoyingly young and so annoyingly talented that he hasn't yet established a prime position and really can play pretty much anywhere.

If Hodgson had taken some of these basic steps while I doubt England could have won the World Cup with that group of players they were certainaly able to qualify from the group and possibly make it to the quarter or even semi-finals. From there you can just get away with being a bit lucky.

Unfortunately the World Cup is a time when football is discussed by a lot of people who know absolutely nothing about football so sadly people in England are starting to believe Hodgson's bulls*t and talking about him continuing as manager until 2016. That will probably happen because Britain is planning to play the will they/won't they qualify game before Euro 2016 and we'll certainly need an excuse not to go to Russia in 2018.

Personally I just want to go back to the days when we used to burn effigies of England managers simply for trying and failing. After all this one has certainly tried to fail.

(Originally Posted) 15:15 on 24/6/14 (UK date).