England

Insideworldfootball.com

The World Cup qualifiers have produced the usual bag of results that make you sit up and take notice. Spain rediscovering their touch with their victory in Paris, Israel suggesting they might become more than a country that makes up the numbers but, inevitably, it was been England that has made all the headlines and the wrong ones at that.

So the common refrain has been why cannot the English play like champions to be? This, of course, is a very familiar story and one that keeps cropping up every time the English team take the field. However England’s performance, particularly in the second half against Montenegro, does raise some urgent questions. For England to go from a team in total command in the first half to such abject surrender in the second that it made you wonder what was in their half time oranges suggests a serious management flaw that needs to be addressed. The need for this is all the more urgent given the fact that the home team manager so changed things round at half time with his substitution that he emerged at the end of the match looking like a genius. In contrast Hodgson appeared in a frozen stupor in not being able to do anything to arrest England’s dramatic fall.

Read more >

Insideworldfootball

The Rio Ferdinand saga has once again raised the hoary old question of club versus country, always a potent question in international football, particularly the English game. Over the years this has generated much heat, except in the case of Ferdinand this old story has taken a very modern, and it must be said, fascinating twist.

In the classic battles between club and country the story often went as follows. A player would be called up to play for England. The weekend before the match, and remember in those days we did not have double headers and internationals were played midweek, often Wednesday, the player after playing in his club match on a Saturday would report injured and pull out. He was supposed to have suffered some tweak to some part of his body, usually a hitherto unknown muscle, and the club would inform the FA that he could not play.

Read more >

Insideworldfootball

It is always tempting in sport to draw huge global lessons from one defeat or victory. That is a temptation that should be avoided for the simple reason that sporting victories or defeats on their own do not signify vast changes. That only emerges if they are part of a consistent pattern over several seasons.

The most potent example of this was provided by Barcelona. Before their match against A.C. Milan many were prepared to write their obituary. Not only had they lost fairly comprehensively to the Italians in Milan but there had been some bad defeats in the Cup to Real Madrid. Much was made of the effect on the team of the illness of their manager and how from his sick bed in New York he was trying to guide the team.

Read more >

Evening Standard

Holly Colvin, women’s cricket’s answer to spin-king Monty Panesar, has never thought it a big deal to play against men.

This summer, England wicketkeeper Sarah Taylor is set to make history by playing second XI cricket for Sussex, having already held informal talks with the county. Colvin may not have gone as far as her old school friend and long-time colleague but the 23-year-old is thinking along the same lines.

She cut her teeth playing with men for Brighton College as a 15-year-old and Colvin insists: “For me and Sarah, playing men’s cricket made us tougher and it’s something I’d quite like to go back to.

Read more >

New Zealand-born prop of Tongan origin is having too much fun with the Red Rose to worry about questions over his background

Evening Standard

Mako Vunipola cannot understand why anybody should question his right to play for England.

The Saracens prop could have followed his father, Fe’ao, and six uncles and played for Tonga. He could also have chosen the world’s best team, the All Blacks, as he was born in Wellington. And Wales were another option as he came to the principality as an eight-year-old after his dad joined Pontypool. So why the Red Rose?

Read more >