On a glorious late-summer morning last September, with England basking in the warm afterglow of the 5-1 trouncing of Croatia that had secured their qualification for the World Cup, someone asked Fabio Capello whether his team would be favourites to win the tournament if it were to commence the day after, rather than nine months later.
Capello furrowed his brow and stared at his inquisitor with characteristic disapproval; asking the Italian to talk about theoreticals has never been a fruitful pursuit. Eventually, he let out a strange noise, as if to demonstrate his distaste, and then ventured: “At this moment, the English players are in a really good moment of form. We hope it will be the same at the end of the season.”
It is not only the temperature that has dropped since that day. Over the past four months there has been a steady decline in the form, fortunes and fitness of several of England’s leading players. Rio Ferdinand’s lapses and his subsequent three-month absence with a back injury were well documented, but the concerns go far deeper. From David James, in limbo at Portsmouth, through Ferdinand, Steven Gerrard and Theo Walcott to Emile Heskey, there are, suddenly, a number of reasons for England’s supporters to be fearful as they look ahead to their opening game against the United States in Rustenburg on June 12.
Be thankful that the World Cup is not starting tomorrow. If it were — and if Capello were true to his word that he would not select any players who are injured or even carrying injuries — there would be no James, no Ferdinand, no Gerrard, no Glen Johnson, no Walcott and certainly no Owen Hargreaves in the squad.
All have struggled continually with injury in recent months — recent years in the case of Hargreaves, who has not played for Manchester United since September 2008 — and, despite Sir Alex Ferguson’s upbeat bulletin about Ferdinand yesterday, only James, of those six players, is expected to play this weekend.
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James, though, is one of the big headaches for Capello. Over the course of the season the goalkeeper has seen his status as England’s No 1 stabilised by the struggles of Ben Foster, now third choice at United, and Robert Green, but he has played only once for Portsmouth since November 7 because of injury and is desperate to escape a club whose financial troubles have effectively rendered him surplus to requirements.
A loan move to Stoke City was thought to be the best solution for all parties, but that deal broke down yesterday and England’s best goalkeeper faces the alarming prospect of inactivity unless the deal can be resurrected.
That is a situation, presumably, that can be resolved with a little common sense and a little give and take from all parties. Assuming James secures his move away from Fratton Park, the issue will be to prove that he is over the injury problems that have restricted him to 12 appearances for Portsmouth this season. Given the form of Foster and Green, the persistent doubts about Paul Robinson and Scott Carson and the inexperience of Joe Hart, Capello has little choice but to share a little of James’s optimism on the matter.
In the case of Gerrard, too, Capello has little option but to hope for the best.
The England manager is known to have had some misgivings about the way Gerrard’s groin injury has been handled by Liverpool, with the 29-year-old playing through the pain barrier, at times with the help of injections. Capello might even be relieved, in some small way, that the player now faces a two-week layoff with a hamstring problem. Still, it would take a leap of faith to believe that Gerrard will arrive in South Africa in peak fitness, given that injuries have been such a constant in his season.
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Then there is the psychological issue. Gerrard has not been in a happy place this season, weighed down and perhaps wearied by the burden of his club’s troubles. If a cloud has hung over him, as well as his club, Capello must hope that the Liverpool captain will be invigorated by the idea of playing for England in South Africa.
The Actim Index, the official player rating system used by the Premier League, may be considerably less than definitive — the present standings have Dirk Kuyt, Gerrard’s Liverpool team-mate, in ninth position — but the sight of Cesc Fàbregas, Didier Drogba, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Nicolas Anelka and Carlos T?vez in the top five positions would indicate that they carry at least a grain of truth. So does the fact that the highest-placed English players are Agbonlahor, Aaron Lennon, Jermain Defoe, Wayne Rooney and James Milner, although Ashley Cole should surely be higher than 33rd place.
The striking thing about these rankings is that the English players who are thriving are, with the exception of Rooney, those on the periphery of Capello’s squad. Gerrard is 45th, having appeared in all but three of Liverpool’s 20 Barclays Premier League matches.
Even more glaring, under the circumstances, is that Frank Lampard, who has started all but one of Chelsea’s matches, is 29th, having been the highest-placed English player, in third, in last season’s rankings.
A theory is doing the rounds that some players might be holding themselves back for South Africa, but that does not square with the characters of Gerrard or Lampard.
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There are different reasons why the two midfield players have been struggling to find their best form. In Gerrard’s case, there are injuries and there is the psychological crisis that has gripped Liverpool. For Lampard, it seems to relate more to unease about his role in Carlo Ancelotti’s midfield at Chelsea, although he, too, has spent time in the treatment room this season, trying to sort out a thigh injury that has caused him discomfort.
The more the season goes on, the more you wonder whether Milner might have a crucial role to play for England in the World Cup. Much like David Platt did before the 1990 tournament, the midfield player has caught the eye with his form at Aston Villa and taken his game to a new level since being called into the national team. On Thursday night, after Milner scored a wonderful goal to beat Blackburn Rovers in the Carling Cup semi-final, first leg, Martin O’Neill, the Villa manager, called him a “brilliant player”. When asked whether he in fact meant a player who is playing brilliantly, O’Neill, enjoying the game of semantics, replied: “Both.”
On present form, Milner, along with Lennon, is a serious contender for the position on the right-hand side of England’s midfield, with Walcott struggling after injuries of his own to replicate the form that made him such a Capello favourite at the start of the World Cup qualifying campaign. Also in contention is David Beckham, who is intent on pressing home his claim while on loan to AC Milan.
But if the World Cup started tomorrow? Well, let us be grateful that it does not. Michel Platini once memorably said that English players perform “like lions in the autumn and like lambs in the spring”, but, right now, many of them are struggling through this most arduous winter.
It is feasible, of course, that the enforced absences of recent months could help James, Ferdinand, Gerrard, Walcott and others — perhaps even Hargreaves and Joe Cole — to arrive in South Africa feeling fitter and fresher than ever.
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That sounds like an almighty straw to clutch, though, because there is still the curse of the metatarsal to take into the equation.