Basle not Faulty – 5 Things I noticed from Switzerland vs England
After the World Cup build up, the World Cup game, the World Cup itself, the World Cup postmortem and the unfortunately scheduled post-World Cup friendly, we’ve now been blessed with two quick fire European Championship qualifiers. This means that with the Premier League season already almost a month in, we’ve already witnessed as many England games this season as we have domestic battles for each club. International football ey? It just won’t bloody go away. Here’s what I noticed from the mighty England’s triumphant battle with the dastardly Swiss.
1. Cometh the hour, cometh the man – As Jamie Redknapp and Richard Keys argued like a couple of school girls on a balcony (all in glorious High Definition 3D) the camera zoomed repeatedly, like an creepily obsessive voyeur, on Wayne Rooney, the center piece of the evenings entertainment and sure fire headline maker whatever occurred. Sporting a presumably ritualistic symbolic hair cut, and clean shaven, he stood stoically during the anthems like a 12 year old boy in assembly as Glenn Johnson muttered the words to a National Anthem that didn’t seem to have any relation to ours at all. Within 10 minutes, as sure as eggs is eggs, he gave lazy by-line writers everywhere the wet dream they’d be hoping for by sweeping in a low cross from Johnson and “Rooney scores away from home again” became the de-facto tale of the night, with the rest consigned to mere details. As for his actual performance, it stood somewhere between Bulgaria and Algeria, by which I don’t mean Tunisia. His movement and cross field passing were good, but his touch let him down too often and he still seems to be playing like it’s all not quite as important as it once was. Which may indeed ring true.
2. New kid on the block – After looking sprightly and impressive in the opening exchanges, Theo Walcott snagged his foot on a defender during the opening goal and had to be stretchered off. But we needn’t have feared (unless we were Arsene Wenger) as on came Adam Johnson, fresh from upstaging Walcott at Wembley and ready to do the same again. Within 10 minutes of his introduction, all memories of Theo’s impressive start were gone as the tricky City winger Cruyff turned his marker on the bounce and teed up Jermain Defoe, whose scoring boots from Friday unfortunately seemed to have been left on the plane. He went close with a few efforts in the first half before finally capping his display with a well taken goal from a sumptuous first time Steven Gerrard pass. It’s probably too early to say for sure that he’s more John Barnes than Steve Stone, but it’s fair to say the boy already looks like a star, what with his assured control and heroin chic Ian Curtis looks. Of the 19 Manchester City players on the field by the end, he looked by far the best.
3. City of Industry – Which wasn’t hard, what with Gareth Barry taking his role as ‘water carrier’ a little too literally, Joe Hart looking unusually flappy in the rain and Shaun Wright Phillips doing so well to lift Johnson above him in the wing standings you’d be forgiven for thinking it was carefully planned pact between them. On two occasions he found himself free on the right with more England players to find than Swiss and yet on both – quite skillfully – managed to hit the only pass available to him that couldn’t have found a team mate. Quite an achievement. But at least he didn’t have ignominy of having to come on with Peter Crouch this time. Still, City are certainly doing a good job of ruining English football so far.
4. Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be…Steven Gerrard – Whilst Garry Barry was hardly impressive in either game, he did at least provide a concrete answer (if one was even needed) to one of the longest running conundrums in England folklore. Yes, Steven Gerrard does play better without Frank Lampard. We didn’t really need confirmation of that, but it’s nice to have some evidence to point to the next time it’s brought up. Which will most likely be in the next game, when Super Frank returns from injury and Capello bottles his promise to start a fresh and plays with exactly the same team he did in the World Cup, minus the players who’ve forced his hand. What hope that Jack Rodwell will have gotten some games under his belt by then I wonder?
5. As Good As it Gets – All in all though it was a good night. Darren Bent capped it off with his first England goal after being denied an earlier opportunity by the bizarreness of Shaun Wright Phillips’ brain. Shakira may have grabbed a stunning goal back for the Swiss but England never really looked out of control, and should’ve won this by a greater margin in truth. Johnson’s forced his way into Capello’s thinking and Hart looks reliable. Rooney is back scoring and Gerrard is at peace with himself (for the time being.) It’s been as good as it could possibly have been for England after the horror show in the summer. Now we can all get back to hating these people because of the colour of their shirts again. I, for one, can’t wait.
Watch the video below to see why England should host the 2018 World Cup!
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