But we didn’t go there, into that deep pit of hyperbole from which previous England teams have failed to extricate themselves. The utter inadequacy of the opponents was duly noted on air and in print. Normally the English football fan waits, arms outstretched, to be carried away. Not this time. A combination of still-residual despondency and distrust of the new coach combined to curb the normally boundless enthusiasm of the nation. We dug our feet in.
Poll after poll has revealed that Steve McClaren was not the preferred choice as coach for the average England football fan. It will take more than a good first half against Greece to convince them otherwise. There is no proof in a pre-season friendly against uncommitted opposition, but still, I have a feeling this game may prove more significant than many have credited it as being. There was barely a headline that did not deal with the axing of David Beckham before the game. Afterwards, few failed to mention the name of Owen Hargreaves, the official man of the match and the man who took Beckham’s No 7 shirt. Whether this was a brilliant psychological move or not, only the England management will know, but handing the number of the “international sport and style icon”, as a Gillette marketing spokesman described the former England captain, appears resonant with symbolic importance for the future of the national team.
Whereas Beckham primarily represents style over substance, Hargreaves is the polar opposite. There is nothing flash about the way he plays. He sits in front of the defence, breaks up attacks and provides continuity; here is England’s version of the unheralded France skipper who lifted the 1998 World Cup, Didier Deschamps; an Anglo-Saxon hod-carrier by way of Canada and Munich. Like Chelsea’s Claude Makelele and Patrick Vieira in his Highbury pomp, there is barely the hint of a swagger, which may explain why so many England fans took so long to understand his worth to the national side. Now he joins Makelele as one of those unsung heroes whom everybody seems to be serenading until they sing themselves hoarse.
The No 7 shirt remains at the heart of the England game, but the complete celebrity culture has been pinpricked. John Terry’s muscular leadership sounds straight out of Henry V, while McClaren, an Englishman whose journey to the international position has taken him from Bristol to Middlesbrough en route, is re-injecting a dose of rugged English endeavour.
Not that Beckham was anything less than committed in an England shirt. It was not his commitment that held the team back but his undeserved pre-eminence in the mind (or maybe the eyes) of the manager. Before, during and after the World Cup, the English media castigated Sven-Göran Eriksson for sticking with Beckham. Yet when he was dropped under the new regime, it was as if McClaren had unleashed a thunderbolt. The English press didn’t know whether it loathed Beckham’s perceived lack of this and that or loved his newsworthiness.
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His omission was described by the media as “ruthless”. Nonsense. McClaren is coach of a national football team, not an individual who happens to be a brand, a brand the media swallowed to sell copies. Beckham’s decision to jump before he was pushed from the captaincy made life easier for the new coach, but the decision to omit His Newsworthiness from the match squad was an astute one. With the weakest link in the superstar axis of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Beckham ousted, the Liverpool and Chelsea men were able to function somewhere nearer their usually high standards, while Hargreaves the unsung hero quietly picked off attackers, as he had in Germany.
Pace was another difference between McClaren and Eriksson’s England. While the heat in Germany can be offered as some sort of excuse for England’s lethargy, it was not that hot when they stumbled against Wales and idled to an embarrassing stop against Northern Ireland in qualifiers. Wednesday night’s team, stripped of the one-paced Beckham, had more tempo.
More than a few football writers claimed that Hargreaves would, from now on, be the first name on the England team sheet. Under the Swede that would have seemed a wildly fanciful assertion — think Gerrard, Lampard and Owen apart from Beckham — but no longer.
A highly rated collection of individuals, so vastly paid that talk of pride in wearing the Three Lions on their chest came across as just that. It could not help that the coach was being so fantastically rewarded for doing what was evidently, for him, a job and no more. Eriksson was a football mercenary paid to coach and inspire. He failed. Any worthwhile verdict on his successor must wait, but his English background is an undoubted edge.
Shakespeare wrote: “An idiot holds his bauble for a god.” In the shimmering court of King David, the previous coach lost his reason. Whether Steve McClaren is a great coach or not, I would not presume to guess, but his first days suggest he is far from an idiot and that England will no longer be blinded by an excess of stardust. That’s a fair start.
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Murray close to passing physical
Andy Murray’s burgeoning career on the tennis courts made another stratospheric leap last week in Cincinnati when the Kid went one better than Steve McQueen and beat the undisputed champ. No Edward G Robinson saying, “You’re good, kid, but not good enough,” just the great Roger Federer, beaten for what seems the first time in eternity, with a “well done” in defeat. It was yet another reminder of this precocious talent, but the less heralded victory the next day against one of the sport’s foot soldiers, Robby Ginepri, was perhaps more significant still. Those who watched the Scot dismantle Andy Roddick at Wimbledon cannot question his talent, but the failure to meet the challenge of Marcos Baghdatis in the next round hinted at mental demons and a degree of understandable immaturity.
Playing his 13th game in 16 days against Ginepri, Murray physically all but crumbled. It was the first time his young body had been asked to take such a physical pounding, and with temperatures at 40C, he wilted dramatically after taking the first set.
Dropping the second set 6-2 and 4-2 down in the third and final set, all the irritating habits of his recent past kicked in. Murray can play with the aura of an angst-ridden adolescent, scowling, whining and slowly unwinding mentally. It is not a pretty picture. Stooped shoulders, battered racket and muttered curses are all part of the volcanic tantrum that has occasionally gripped him. It appeared to be so again, but somehow he found the iron in the soul to conquer the agony.
Previously he has appeared more interested in searching for a reason for losing than a way out of an approaching defeat. Not this time. He had played himself into the tennis equivalent of the marathon runner’s wall, but battled through to the other side. “I think I proved to a lot of people I can be a good player and possibly a great player” was his reaction to beating the world No 1.
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Federer one day, his own immature demons the next; he’ll be some player when he’s fresh.
Collins fails drug test
Dave Collins, the performance director of UK Athletics, shone a light into the heart of the pressurised world of sport that most of us would rather not see when he explained the inclusion of Dwain Chambers in the 4 x 100m British relay team that won European championships gold last Sunday. Athletics is more than an armchair diversion from the daily grind. To those immersed in the sport, it is their professional life, a life with a brutally accentuated win-at-all-costs philosophy.
Chambers’s previous positive dope tests see him banned from Beijing, but “the rules are the rules”. He was eligible for the European championships, said Collins. Britain is suffering lean athletic times and Collins is in a position where results are required. Therefore why not run Chambers in the relay? Ah, temptation.
Collins explained his dilemma in running this outlawed Olympian. His vocation is to run a programme that is focused on success at Olympic and world level. Success is everything. “To use any athlete who is ineligible (for the Olympics but not the European championships) is a difficult and complex situation,” he said.
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To those who would outlaw drugs from sport, it does not seem that complex. Collins’s choice seems to condone Chambers’s previous actions and hints that drugs are a matter of “rules” rather than ethics. That’s the problem with sport; it’s the real world, too.