Who's Daring to Dream?

Among the many things I love about the World Cup is the huge variety of opinions, articles, talking points, disagreements and perspectives it provokes. Go on any decent website and there are as many different articles as you could hope to read, discussing every possible aspect of the tournament. You can read about the teams, players, previous tournaments, the infrastructure, the impact on the hosts, impact on previous hosts, basically anything.

But without doubt the best thing (possibly including the matches, that remains to be seen) is the debate (yes I mean arguments). Who's in your All-time XI, who's in your fantasy team, who will win the Golden Boot, do Messi/Ronaldo need to win to be considered among the best players ever, who should start for England and how far will we get? There is virtually nothing on which you'll find yourself in complete agreement with someone else. If you do, the only thing I can recommend is you debate things a bit more.

Of all the contentious issues, there is one that most clearly identifies the optimists, pessimists, realists and idiots. How will England do? 
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about England's chances going into Euro 2012. Before the tournament, there was a genuine sense of realism about the England football team and our chances in such a way that there was no huge feeling of devastation when Diamanti tucked home the decisive penalty. Winning the group failed to inspire any genuine hope and rightly so given the insipid performance produced against the Italians.

So with it all kicking off on Thursday evening, how are we feeling this time around? There's a certain satisfying symmetry with England starting where they left off in the Euros, aiming to avenge that defeat and put right the dour and lacklustre style of play from 2 years ago. Lots has been made of the exciting young talents of Oxlade-Chamberlain, Sterling, Lallana and Barkley but whether they're quite enough to inspire blind optimism in a naturally wary nation remains to be seen. Surely it will be the same old story. Surely warm up draws against the might of Ecuador and Honduras tell us all we need to know. Surely...

I can't help myself, I'm going to put it out there that by 1am on Sunday morning, there'll be the faintest of glints in the eye of even the most cynical of England fans. 

A different Andy Murray?

With the US Open less than a fortnight away, the question has to be whether claiming Olympic Gold is going to prove to be a turning point in the career of Andy Murray. No number of articles, blog posts or interviews could possibly enhance how aware we all are of his 'nearly man' status.

To date, twenty-seven grand slams have produced four major finals, which in turn have yielded just one set won. No-one can question his ability, speed around the court, outstanding returning and seemingly relentless defensive abilities. He has vastly improved his second serve and ability to attack rather than just waiting for opponents' mistakes, but most of all, he is mentally stronger. Only time and results will be a true measure but claiming his first genuinely significant title will surely have taught Murray like nothing else that he really is good enough to beat the best.

Only once before (2010 Toronto Masters) had he beaten two of the top 3 in consecutive matches. On six occasions he beat one before losing to the next (normally in the final). But at the Olympics, he beat both Djokovic and Federer. Of course neither were on the top of their game, Novak seeming out of sorts and almost demotivated and Roger simply shattered, but that effect was greatly exacerbated by Murray's sheer aggression and dominance all over the court.

There was something different about him, determined and proud, the crowd fully unified behind him, exuding confidence. He was by quite some distance the best player at the tournament, by a long way, and it never seemed even remotely possible that he could lose. Perhaps being part of something bigger, participating as a member of Team GB, perhaps something else, but irrespective of the reason, this was a different Andy Murray.

Heading to Flushing Meadows, he must be right up there with Djokovic and Federer as a one of, if not the clear favourite. Nadal's withdrawal doesn't change the fact that Murray will have to beat them both (upsets aside), but we now know he can and very possibly, the Scot knows it now as well. 

What I really do hope for is a high quality final. There are few better sights in tennis than a Grand Slam final, where both players are completely at the top of their games. So often it seems as though one player doesn't quite compete as we know they can, and it ends up as less of a contest than it has the potential for. The Wimbledon final was a perfect example of a high-class clash between the two best players in the tournament.

The variety and accuracy with which Federer distributed the ball around the court was utterly remarkable, and frankly without compare. Murray played as well as he could, finding a great balance with his solid defence providing an excellent foundation from which to attack. Maybe in a few weeks time we will be able to say that both played to their maximum but that Murray came out on top at last.

A Post-Apocolympic Sporting World

If you're being honest with yourself, as a British Sporting fan, did you really think we would have quite such a successful Olympics? 

Surely something is amiss when we experience this level of genuine success with no 'buts' and particularly when all the logistical side of things ran so smoothly as well. A lesson in how to defy multiple British self-perceptions in one spectacular fortnight. After years of being faithful (and perhaps ever so slightly masochistic) spectators of great anticipation preceding deflating and disappointing sporting performances something was very different this time. It is unlikely that many of us will have in our lifetime either another London Olympics or a time of such unified national fervour and support. Similarly it's pretty unlikely that any time soon Team GB or its composite nations will see a repeat of such unbridled sporting success.

There was such a build up that frankly most of the country was pretty sick of the whole thing before it even started and yet as a nation we were won over by relentless success. Barely a day seemed to go past when we didn't win a medal in a sport that we barely knew existed, alongside overwhelming dominance in the likes Cycling and Rowing. Suddenly the whole nation, sporting-sceptics included, found itself being swept along about Canoeing, fired up about Trap Shooting and struck by Taekwondo. 

So now we find ourselves back in the regular swing of things. The football season has begun again in earnest, with the League Cup, Charity Shield and random irrelevant international friendlies. It's hard to see how anyone can stop City from dominating the Premiership this season. A slow start might put them under pressure and make the race interesting, but the strengthening done by the chasing pack doesn't seem like enough to make the difference. Chelsea and Arsenal have spent a lot and brought in some excellent players but have lost their respective talismen with Drogba departing and Van Persie making his intentions clear. It seems as though Utd have sealed the RVP deal so they could seriously threaten, as they almost always do, but the likes of Liverpool and Spurs, if anything, seem weaker than last year. That said, the new manager effect is an unpredictable enigma at the best of times. At least we don't have much time to wait to find out.

Meanwhile, the rest of the sporting world continues as though it is any old August. London 2012 and the great success of Team GB has no bearing now on the England - South Africa cricket series, the US Open tennis, the AVIVA Premiership rugby and Formula 1 returning to action from its mid-season break. Plenty to keep us interested then.

Reasons to be Fearful

As English football fans, we (this weekend I suppose that's some form of Royal 'We') seem to be stuck in some form of sadistic biennial cycle, which we can observe and discuss but ultimately do absolutely nothing about. Every other autumn, we forget the summer that's just passed, and start again with fresh belief. New players, often a new manager, new qualification campaign, new hope that this time things will be different. Generally speaking we qualify convincingly (Steve McLaren aside) and often pick up narrow victories in thoroughly irrelevant friendly matches.

Consequently, we normally have reason to be relatively optimistic about our chances heading into major tournaments. Despite history not being in our favour, we do have one of the strongest domestic leagues and genuinely world-class players (and theoretically managers).

It's all very promising until we actually play, at which point a mixture of ill-discipline, goalkeeping blunders, refereeing errors, penalties and just poor performance combine to ensure the return of that sickening anticlimactic dismay and disappointment with which we're all so familiar. And thus the cycle is completed again, with cries of "the same old story", "there we go again" and "I knew it" echoing out in pubs and lounges across the country.

And yet, 2 years later, against our better judgement and logical reasoning, we believe again that this could be our year, and maybe football will come home after all. Then the tournament goes down we all knew it would and the players have an extra week or two of summer holidays. The same old story.

Well this year, leading up to Euro 2012, it's different. Maybe I'm faithless but I can't see any reasons to be cheerful. More like a few reasons to be fearful.

The main one is our squad. When announced it made most of the country grimace and want to close the web page or turn off your phone. It was like when you're watching a match and it becomes increasingly obvious the team you're supporting is going to lose, all you want to do is leave the stadium or turn the TV off and forget about it.

The originally named squad was bad enough, complete with the inexplicable omission of Micah Richards and Aaron Lennon, alongside the equally inexplicable inclusion of Stuart "I bring absolutely nothing to the team" Downing and Andy "I played a bit better in May so that's good enough to start for England." Carroll. But now that the physio's room is like a scene from Saving Private Ryan, we're calling on pretty much anyone who can even count the Lions on our shirts. In all honesty I'm nearly ready to check I've got my passport handy in case the barrel-scraping gets out of hand.

Welbeck demonstrates to Carroll
the general idea behind being a striker

Make no mistake, wins over Norway and Belgium are not sufficient to convince us that maybe there is a shred of hope after all. All this talk of being the new Greece '04 and taking the title with tactical defensive displays is absurd. Yes, we did contain the opposition well and keep two clean sheets, but we weren't exactly playing Spain or Germany were we? If we can do the same against France next Monday, maybe then we can discuss it. I am glad that endless cycle of hope and despair is broken, even if it is by having zero hope and zero expectation. So much so that even that well-known nation of "soccer" analysts, the USA, has picked up on our dismal chances this summer.

I'm a fan of Hodgson, I think he's an astute guy and should ensure we don't embarrass ourselves, but I doubt he's ever going to have the nation on its feet in elation. That said, I don't subscribe to the view that we only want to win if we win well. Look at Spain's results from the World Cup:
Spain 0-1 Switzerland (Groups)
Spain 2-0 Honduras (Groups)
Spain 2-1 Chile (Groups)
Spain 1-0 Portugal (Last 16)
Spain 1-0 Paraguay (QF)
Spain 1-0 Germany (SF)
Spain 1-0 Holland (Final - AET)

If we come away with a semi-final appearance, and only a few goals scored, it'll be our most successful performance since '96 and no-one should complain at that (we will though)

English football: Substance over Style?

I know we have no chance in the Euros, and I fully stand by what I said about not getting our hopes up. So don't go rushing to comment about my naivety or idiocy just yet. But perhaps Chelsea's inspiring victory over Barca gives us a slender glimmer of hope, at least that we might not embarrass ourselves. In no way am I suggesting that we play the 7-2-1 formation that Chelsea adopted on Tuesday night, but we have seen that the greatest technical ability will not always win. Just ask Mr Idealistic Pep Guardiola. 

We are far from the best team competing this summer but we're also far from the worst. According to FIFA rankings, we are the 5th best team there, with the others in our group being ranked 16, 17 and 49 in the World. Realistically, you'd maybe say we're 7th best, with teams like France/Italy who had bad World Cups better than us but currently ranked lower.
If we are to have any chance of at least performing respectably, we need to recognise the reality of what we can and can't do. For too long we have enviously dreamed of the technical ability of other nations, lamenting its absence in the players we have at our disposal. Of course we have produced players of intricate skill and creativity like Joe Cole, or vision and passing ability like Paul Scholes, but these are rare - we are never going to have a midfield of Iniesta, Xavi, Mata and Silva. 

The reality is that the bread and butter of our team is built not on skill, technique and close control but on pace, power and passion. We have no chance if we try to emulate Spain because we need to recognise the fact that, as disappointing as it might be, we do not have the technical ability to match it. This doesn't necessarily mean we play ugly or just long-ball, but nor does it mean we attempt tiki-taka because it will not end well. The core of our team, players like Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard, Terry, Cashley, are not going to win us a match, let alone a tournament if we try slow build-up, possession football, waiting for a moment of genius to unlock a defence.


Five or six years ago, Spain came to this realisation, but in reverse. They were physically outmuscled again and again in major tournaments, and consistently failed to perform to their potential. They realised that their strength lay in their pass and move build-up play, not speed or strength. The following quote sums up Spain's change of strategy after their latest tournament failure, the '06 World Cup. 

After being eliminated from the competition, Luis Aragonés came to the decision that the team was not physical or tough enough to be able to out-muscle opponents, they therefore opted to start concentrating on monopolising the ball and thus started to employ the tiki-taka - a style characterised by short passing and movement, working the ball through various channels, and maintaining possession.

Spain haven't done too badly since then really. Looking at the examples of Arsenal and Man U might give further weight to the idea. Wenger has created a team of small, skilful players such as Rosicky, Arshavin, Nasri, Walcott. Lots of creativity and nice looking football, but very few trophies. United on the other hand play with a lot of speed and power, still attacking and aggressive but based more on swift counter-attack rather than endless possession, and have dominated English football for 20 years.
Regardless of whether it is Roy Hodgson, Stuart Pearce or Harry Redknapp who leads us in Poland/Ukraine and beyond, we need to play to our strengths and play an English style of football, not a poor attempt at Spanish football.

PS Ben, if you happen to read this blog, I'm sorry, I know this will offend your footballing philosophies.

Hope Deferred Makes the Sporting Fan Sick

I can safely assume that (with the notable, and appreciated, exception of particularly close family/friends) the vast majority of those that take the time to read what I put on here have some level of interest in sport. And it is also a reasonable assumption that someone with even a passing interest in sport also has a degree of preference for/against particular teams/players. I know someone who isn't exactly gunning for a place on A Question of Sport, but vaguely follows tennis and rugby and has an irrational hatred for Novak Djokovic and the Welsh national team respectively.

Having any form of favouritism or preference for a team or player leads to both euphoria (however infrequently in some cases), and much more inevitably, disappointment. But sporting disappointment and frustration comes in many forms. 

There is a form of disappointment that will be alien to the fans of the perpetually victorious (Barcelona, Djokovic, the All Blacks, etc.) Undeniably they experience defeat, failure and even humiliation on occasion but not that constant, resigned disappointment that comes from knowing you are going to lose, and that indeed becoming reality. Losing in the semi-finals or coming only 3rd isn't quite the same as week after week turning up for an ultimately "pointless" Saturday afternoon.

This lad hasn't got used to English
national teams just yet. He will...

But neither that sporadic disappointment of occasional defeats amongst a sea of victories, nor the relentless disappointment of weekly defeats and poor performance compare to the disappointment of your side performing well and getting your hopes up, before falling just short, or collapsing spectacularly. Of course there is that natural up and down of all sporting teams but surely nothing is more frustrating for a fan than inconsistency.
A thrilling run of victories, followed by a home defeat to the team bottom of the league. A decent patch of form then a cup defeat to a lower league team. Reaching the final rounds of a few tournaments then crashing out to a qualifier in the first round.
As British people we of course wisely expect the worst, a realism/pessimism spawned from years of watching our national team fail to meet their potential. How much more frustrating then, when we allow ourselves to believe, to have some hope, to permit just that sneaking faith in the chances of victory and glory, only for the inevitable to happen again. However much we might kick ourselves for allowing hope to conquer realism, we know that it will do the same again next time.

So when England are 233-4, chasing a record 340 against Sri Lanka, don't give hope an inch.
When we're 12-6 up in the second half against a 14-man Wales team, don't give hope an inch.
If Sunday evening comes and an Englishman is leading at Augusta by 5 shots, don't start celebrating until that Green Jacket is wrapped around him like a blanket
And on the 11th June this year, when we beat France and only have to get past Sweden and Ukraine in order to progress, don't let yourself believe. 


There's nothing that will make you sick to the stomach like abandoning your inherently British pessimism and starting to hope against all hope, only for the result to be even worse than you'd ever imagined to start with.

A silver seam to the English ODI cloud?

A few days ago I had every intention of writing an upbeat blog about the irrelevance of the current ODI series looking ahead to the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup. Fortunately I was away for the weekend and thus had the chance to consider this ill-fated series' final match before expressing an opinion.

Why should one last failure make such a difference? Perhaps it doesn't, but somehow the last vain shred of optimism that I was clinging to for the showpiece of the one-day game disintegrated inside the first 2 duck-filled overs of England's innings.

A cursory glanced over the statistics does not exactly inspire one to find the nearest bookies and place a wager on our Ashes-winning heroes. Here are a few particular highlights:
1) Most runs - 4 of top 5 were Aussies (Trott our lone stalwart)
2) Most wickets - all of top 4 were Aussies
3) Batsmen with strike rate of 95+ :
- England: 2 Davies (102), Finn (130)
- Australia: 7 (Watson (102), Johnson (96), M Hussey (140), Lee (103), Bollinger (106), Voges (111), Krejza (150)

But anyone who has followed the series at all will surely have heard that after the 06/07 Ashes debacle, we actually won the ODI series (despite Aus winning more games than us). That time round there was a triangular series with New Zealand, we scraped through the "group stage" to have a best of 3 final with Aus, and promptly beat them 2-0. 


Aus then lost Chappell-Hadlee trophy to New Zealand. (Ian) Bell-ringingly, the Aussies' batting and bowling never performed on the same day (the exact problem with England currently). In the 1st match they were bowled out for 148, in the second match they posted 336 but NZ chased it down and in the final match they racked up a huge 346 only to again fail to defend it (these two NZ victories are the 3rd and 2nd biggest ODI run chases in history respectively- incidentally 4 of the top 5 chases are Aus failing to defend big totals)

So Aussie form going into the WC was relatively poor, especially for such a golden generation of players. How did this affect their performance? Well here is a summary of their 11 matches:

Won by 203 runs

Won by 229 runs
Won by 83 runs
Won by 103 runs
Won by 10 wickets
Won by 7 wickets
Won by 9 wickets
Won by 7 wickets
Won by 215 runs
Won by 7 wickets
Won by 53 runs (in a shortened match)

On an individual basis, they had 2 of top 3 in both bowling and batting (McGrath/Tait (26/23 wickets) / (Hayden/Ponting 659/539 runs). Additionally Matthew Hayden scored more than twice as many 6's as anyone else (29 - Gibbs was next closest on 14)


It was an utterly devastating and dominant performance, crushing every opponent they faced, including South Africa and Sri Lanka twice each. It was seemingly such a pinnacle of Australian cricketing dominance that the Australian Cricket team Wikipedia article is mysteriously lacking in any detail of any match since. Perhaps even more curious is the almost complete absence of any mention of a particular recent Ashes series, in either the main article or one of the links it provides. Remarkable.

Australia are currently undefeated in 29 consecutive WC matches - and I think it's unlikely their 1st match this time round, against Zimbabwe, will break that (Heath) Streak


But who knows, maybe our beloved captain Strauss is right and there is hope after all. Group B opponents, you have been (Shane) Warned. 


I remain unconvinced...





PS - I hope you enjoyed the introduction of the odd pun, so long as I keep it down to an average of only 3 puns an over, I could probably open the bowling for England