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It’s not easy to make Club England like Team GB

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So goodbye Team GB and welcome back club England. The timing of England’s match against Italy, three days after the end of the Games, was very telling. For while this pre-season friendly – albeit it showed English football is not quite bereft of ability – is no time to make judgements about the post-Euro 2012 state of the game, it does allow us to assess the lessons the Olympics holds for the national game.

The first thing we have to avoid is a knee-jerk, exaggerated response that the Olympics and the wonderful glow it has created could now bathe English football in a new light. The idea that the spirit generated by Team GB could be taken and just bolted on to football and all other sports is nonsense.

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London gets everything, moans the rest of the country. Mihir Bose explains why this has to be the Olympic case

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The start of the Olympics, with the women’s football match between Great Britain and New Zealand at Cardiff’s Millennium stadium, has ignited the old controversy: why are the Games given to a city and not a country? Why does the International Olympic Committee not follow FIFA and take its events round the country?

When you put this argument to the IOC, their answer is always the same: the format works so why change it? That is exactly what Sir Craig Reedie, the Briton who sits on the executive of the IOC, said to me. I had prefaced my question by making the same point that quite a few critics have made: that the IOC format of one city takes all, devised back at the end of the 19th century, does not work for the 21st.

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The John Terry case probably should never have come to court, but this does not mean football, and particularly the FA, can relax. There is much that is wrong with the game, particularly the way the game is administered. The FA and, for that matter, the clubs, need to answer some hard questions and take a very long hard look at the game, and in particular, what they teach players about how to behave on and off the field.

It is matter for sober reflection that such a thought would have been unthinkable at the beginning of last season. But events since then have indicated that, for all the success of the Premier League, there is an undergrowth there that is far from pleasant, let alone one that could be a beacon to the rest of the world.

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Spain 2012 or Brazil 1970. Image courtesy of PlayUp

There is nothing more satisfying in all sport than to proclaim a player or a team as the best ever. But the clamour for saying Spain 2012 is the best team the world of football has ever seen raises all sorts of issues. Not least, how do you compare teams and players from different generations?

In my memory, and I admit it goes back a bit now, no football team will ever compare with that of Brazil in 1970. Yes, you could say that this is my memory playing tricks and a reluctance on my part to shed the romantic images I carry from my youth. I shall grant you that.

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Lescott and Young celebrate England's opening goal of Euro 2012. Image courtesy of PlayUp

The English, who pride themselves on being a pragmatic nation, always able to assess things calmly and rationally, do lose their heads when it comes to football. And they are in great danger of doing so again at these Euros. Now this may seem a strange thing to say, but bear me out.

The nation goes into this competition in a more subdued frame of mind than at any time since Italia 1990, when English clubs were just getting back into European competition after a five year absence due to the awful events at Heysel. This time round it is not hooliganism, but problems in English football management which has meant going into an international competition under a manager who has been in charge for a mere six weeks. Even for a nation that almost boasts of muddling through, this is a bit much.

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