At World's End

Forget the disallowed goal. Nobody should give a shit.

Had Lampard's goal been given, we would have been no more likely to beat Germany today. A Germany team that, on paper, is definitely not as good as ours.

Today was the most embarassing example of old versus new that I have ever seen, and for a team from the world's best domestic league I can't for the life of me see why we play a formation that none of our best club sides would dream of.

Capello watches Chelsea, United and Arsenal 100 times a year, how can he not see that their systems provide the most effective football, home and abroad? If we'd have copied Germany's 4-2-3-1 we probably would have won, despite how badly we played.

I was optimistic about our system before the start of the tournament. We had won for fun playing it. But after twenty minutes of the USA game, I changed my mind. Fabio Capello didn't. Algeria was ten times worse and it became clear that, technically, we were massively inferior to other countries on the ball.

The only way to give the team a chance was to play them all in their best positions. That never happened. Instead the players got in a strop - attempted 40-yard shots and spectacular passes, and failed with it ninety percent of the time.

Capello's squad then has to be scrutinised, and in hindsight it looks conservative, backwards thinking and lacking imagination. Shaun Wright-Phillips is definitely a below-average winger at international level yet he was considered superior to players such as Johnson, Young and and Walcott, who had all had better seasons.

Emile Heskey has, for ten years now, been given a starting role for England on the premise that he brings the best out of the players around him. Bollocks. The manager is paid to get the best out of the players, the players are supposed to make an on-field contribution. The fact that we saw Heskey first as our number one striker, and second as a better substitute than Crouch, is nothing short of laughable.

This is a depressing conclusion, as three months ago it looked as though everything was perfect. Although the same could be said for Sven. Suddenly on the biggest occasion, the players lost belief, the manager lost ideas and we showed a complete inability to break down defences which, at club level, would be a walkover. Why does this always happen.

Is Capello a bad manager? No. Are England's players that bad? No. Can they work together? Not on that evidence. Unless a thorough tactical overhaul is carried out immediately, the FA's experimentation with foreign coaches is going to come to a very sharp end. And I can't say I hold out much hope.