Football's not coming home

For the third major tournament in a row, England got kicked out at the Quarter Finals.

Almost predictably, it was on penalties.

The defeat also means the end of Sven Goran Eriksson's reign as England manager.

This was England's supposedly golden generation of footballers. The best squad according to some that England have had for decades.

The apparent talking point has been Wayne Rooney's sending off around the 60th minute and Ronaldo's apparent part in getting him sent off.

For me, Ronaldo had fuck all to do with him getting sent off. The fact is that Rooney stamped on Carvalho - granted he was fouled beforehand and the ref didnt give it - and every man and his dog knows you aren't supposed to do that. To make it worse, he then followed the stamp with a push on Ronaldo right in front of the referee. Two very stupid things within seconds of each other.

In truth England never looked like winning the world cup. They were terribly lacklustre throughout the entire tournament and only showed a glimpse of their potential in parts of the 1st half against sweden. They then made amends for this by being crap in the second half and should have conceded at least 4 goals.

Some have argued that the team wasnt as good as it was made out to be. This argument is based in part on the fact that some players had a mare. Lampard being the main target but overall the team didnt get up to much. I disagree with this assessment. England do have world class players in the starting eleven.

Ashley cole, Terry, Rio, Gerrard, Lampard, Joe Cole and arguably Rooney and Beckham are World Class players IMO (their league form proves this).

The lack of success lies with the manager IMO. Sven is a good manager contrary to popular myth. The problem lies in the fact that if you want to win the world cup, you need more than a good manager. You need a very good manager or a world class manager and it was obvious to me from his days at Lazio that Sven wasnt a very good manager. He gets the minimum out of the teams that he manages and given England's squad and the easy teams they played, the Quarter final was the least that he could achieve. If they had gone out at the group stages or the second round then i suspect they'd have brought back the gallows at Marble Arch just for him.

Still, he did okay and gave a lot of players a chance to play for their country. Some think this was wrong but i think this brought happiness to those players and they got to play for their country at least once.

Onwards and upwards i hope, time to see what Steve McLaren can do now he has taken over. At least we know he is not afraid to take risks.