It seems like only last year that England lost their last 16 game against Germany in South Africa to end their hopes of winning the World Cup. The fact is that happened almost four years ago to the day. We are now in the midst of the 2014 tournament in Brazil and sadly England have failed to reach even the less than dizzy heights of their last campaign.
This time around the team selected by Roy Hodgson has finished bottom of their group, having lost to two opponents and drawn with the other. On reflection, this is probably what should have been expected given the number of young players in the squad and the quality of the other teams in the group.
The biggest disappointment was the performance of England's so called "best player". Once again Wayne Rooney has shown that his reputation far outweighs his ability. His failure to get back and help in defence led directly to one of the goals scored by Italy and was a contributing factor in their second.
For the second group game Roy Hodgson gave in to pressure from the critics and moved Rooney into his favoured number 10 position, displacing the very impressive Raheem Sterling. This nullified one of our most potent attacking options. Rooney finally scored for the fist time in a World Cup finals game, but overall he was much less effective than Sterling and the team lacked that something special.
Following early elimination from the tournament, a number of senior players are now deciding their futures, with Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard both considering retirement. The promising performances of a number of the young players bodes well for the future. However, the one player who should be leaving the team is sadly too young and far too full of himself to retire. The only hope is that in two years time Roy Hodgson is brave enough and the younger players have progressed to the point where Wayne Rooney in an England shirt is an image from the BBC archives!
Cheers,
Quartzsoft.