arbitrary constant

Perhaps I spoke too soon:

England's fair play record is well known, having been awarded the fair play award at the 1990 and 1998 World Cups. England players have received yellow cards on 32 occasions and red cards on just two. One was David Beckham against Argentina in 1998 — answers on a postcard for the other. Assuming Wayne Rooney plays some part, let us all hope he manages to control his temperament and ensure he doesn't receive the fifth red card of his career.

And what did the boy wonder go and do? Receive the fifth red card of his career, thus ensuring he has never finished a competitive match against Portugal (or, indeed, a quarter final in an international tournament).

England's World Cup defeat, however, was not Rooney's fault — in fact, when Beckham was substituted early in the second half and Aaron Lennon was introduced, England looked better playing with 10 men than they had with 11. Still, penalties were the most likely outcome and it took just one look at the English players walking to the spot to see they weren't going to win.

In Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, England has two of the best players in the world — and yet neither of them could score from 12 yards. Even given the exceptional circumstances their penalties were simply not good enough, and you could see they weren't going to be good enough from their body language as they walked to the spot and the run up they took to hit their kicks. As Gerrard himself has since said:

I was man enough to step up and take it but, the way I hit a ball, I should score a penalty.

Contrast Lampard's and Gerrard's body language and penalties with that of Owen Hargreaves. It is well known that Hargreaves plays his club football in Germany and it is my contestation that Hargreaves's "German" mindset (insofar as it can be argued he has one) led to his personal belief that he was going to score his penalty. (Famously, the German football team have never lost a penalty shootout and in their match against Argentina, all four German penalty takers scored.)

Finally (so far as comment on England's involvement goes), even if England had have won on penalties there would still be the small matter of no John Terry in defence, no Beckham in midfield and either Peter Crouch or Theo Walcott as the starting striker against (what turned out to be) France because of match bans. With such a line-up — the loss of Beckham no bad thing but with Sven's continued misuse of personnel in misguided formations still present — England would still have capitulated to a re-invigorated French team.

The reality is that England were never good enough to win the 2006 World Cup.

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