Best World Cup games since 1998 – Germany 4-1 England

Obviously it’s really sad when your team gets knocked out of the World Cup, so sorry in advance for this one, but come on, this game was incredible. It would have been the most England-esque defeat of all time, if only they had been allowed to lose again on penalties after the 90 minutes were up.

After failing to reach Euro 2008, England sacked Steve McClaren. The FA, having probably thought long and hard on the issue, decided that hiring a better manager was the most effective way of avoiding embarrassment every two years. Of course, England trying to avoid embarrassment is like trying to avoid islamophobia on Facebook – the inevitability of it really doesn’t detract from the pain of watching someone you like/used to like out themselves as a complete moron in front of the entire world.

Yet Fabio Capello was hired to try anyway. General belief seemed to be that Capello was a man who would get results, but fans may have to put up with his unattractive style of football. And what a tragedy it was to see the high-aesthetics of England’s traditional long-ball game compromised – by pretty much the same rubbish.

You know the story; after an outrageously encouraging qualifying campaign, England struggled to negotiate a group containing the USA, Algeria, and Slovenia, scoring two goals in three matches.

Despite being so outrageously boring on the pitch during their first three matches (Rob Green howlers aside), the England team’s antics off it were fantastic entertainment. Capello bullying Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce on the bench was a work of art – spotting the ‘hard man’ prowling the technical area, ordering him to sit down, then pushing him back up again; much like the way a year eleven would humiliate a year seven at the back of a school bus.

While Wayne Rooney’s footballing ability was at an all-time low, he displayed an even bigger talent – breaking the fourth wall whilst on the pitch. “Nice to see yer home fans booin’ yer” after the 0-0 draw with Algeria was the single greatest thing Wayne Rooney has ever said on TV*, demonstrating laughable ignorance towards fans who had travelled halfway across the globe to watch him do nothing but look a bit angry for 90 minutes.

John Terry, meanwhile, tried to initiate a coup d’état after the humiliating Algeria match, turning his press-conference the following day into a declaration of war. Of course, in true John Terry fashion, it fell apart. No one else in the team was willing to back him up, and, if reports are correct, Capello made Terry sit back down as quickly as he did Psycho Pearce.

The BBC’s entire build-up to the Germany-England game itself was fantastically hubristic. Between Lee Dixon, Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen, there was not even a shred of doubt that England would defeat the finalists of the previous European Championships – a tournament Our Brave Boys had failed to even qualify for. After all, England had just laboured to a 1-0 win against the least populous side in the World Cup, how could they not beat the three-time world champions, Germany?

Even the most jingoistic England fans would admit that the silver lining to their team being beaten is the bad things that happen to bad people. Terry was at fault for two goals in the first 35 minutes; he first fled from the landing site of Manuel Neuer goal-kick, leaving Miroslav Klose to slide the ball home, then he abandoned Thomas Muller, who fed Lukas Podolski. Embarrassing himself on the pitch soon after embarrassing himself off it is a signature JT move. His ostentatious ‘Lionheart’ gimmick is hilarious as a stand-alone device, but the inevitable defensive errors that follow are even better. One of the few things that could have truly improved this game would have been if Terry had saved his diving-header-block for it, rather than using it in the previous game against Slovenia.

Lampard’s ‘goal’ was obviously the peak of both the match, and the entire tournament (although Luis Suarez’s handball & celebration runs it very, very close). Considering how badly England had played in the first half, they had absolutely no right to bring the scores back to 2-1, let alone equalise.

The injustice was essentially one of the most just parts of the game, and no one does hard-done-by quite like the English national football team. Despite being pretty rubbish, England have managed to paint themselves as the victims of rough justice after the majority of tournament exits. Maradonna’s handball, Ronaldo winking to get Rooney sent off (nothing to do with Rooney stamping on Carvalho’s crotch, of course), Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal (x2); it gets to the point where, regardless of whether they have actually been beaten by fair means or foul, any potential miscarriage of justice against England is just really funny.

The international swansong of Joe Cole also came full-circle. Despite spending every waking hour, post-2006, being injured and/or falling over his own feet attempting a trick he saw Ronaldinho pull off in a Nike advert, Cole managed to find himself on Capello’s long-list for the World Cup squad.

While initially a surprise inclusion, there was a mid-tournament push from pundits, players and fans for Chelsea’s chubby step-over addict to be included in the first team. “Listen, Joe is one of the best players in our country,” claimed John Terry in his big press conference. “He and Wayne are the only two who can open up defences.” This was proven to be true when Joe Cole came on as a substitute on the right wing, and subsequently opened up England’s defence by failing to offer his full-back any kind of cover. Germany sent two quick counter-attacks down the England right upon Cole’s arrival, and scored from both.

Of course, there was some fantastic football played by the German side too. Putting the schadenfreude-fest to one side, it was brilliant to watch a team full of players no one had heard of (at the time) tearing a more reputable one apart. Sami Khedira, Mesut Ozil, Neuer, and Muller were all brilliant, with the latter three each involved in at least one of the four goals. After Gareth Barry had been earmarked to keep Ozil out of the game, the German playmaker went about proving him utterly unworthy of the challenge. Ozil sprinting away from England’s makeshift holding player in the build-up to the match’s fifth goal became a gestus for the match as a whole – the young and talented racing away from the dull and overrated.

 

*he proved this was no one-off several months later with his follow-up piece to camera “Fucking what, what?”