Forty Years of Hurt...and probably a lot more if you don't shut up.

This was an old blog I wrote after England's match against Kazakhstan a few months ago.

Everybody nowadays has their own opinion on the England football team. Every season-ticket club fanatic, every armchair manager with the George Cross plastered over his son's face, every hyperbole-obsessed journo and every single ex-player splashed across BBC Radio 5 Live and Match of the Day seems to have their own view on the current situation of our men in white (and red). The maelstrom of critics and opinions and judgements really is beginning to blend together into an endless white noise, where every single movement is scrutinised and analysed, every result and match broken down and the negative points of each are dissected out and held up for all to see. And frankly, I don't know about you, but it's getting really, REALLY boring.
Let me just start by saying I'm not a full-on football lover. Rugby has always been my main sport. But I have always enjoyed football as well. I don't support any given club, to be honest - when pushed, I'll say Liverpool (I did so back in infant school) or Aston Villa (simply because I read somewhere that they field, on average, more English players each week in their first teams than most, if not all, other Premiership clubs) - and I just enjoy the game mainly as a neutral, watching with interest the rising fortunes and the downward spirals of various teams.
But what I have noticed is a worryingly short attention span in modern football. Maybe attention span is the wrong word; maybe, patience? Yes, that works. Short patience. And I think I know why.
In recent years we have noticed a new trend in the Premiership - football teams nowadays are treated as businesses, investments for men with more money than sense, rather than football clubs. But to be honest, this hasn't changed much. The successful clubs have remained successful despite the influx of an almost infinite amount of money. The big four remain the same big four that has been for quite some time - Manchester United, for example, have been winning trophies for as long as football has been around, seemingly, and the arrival of a bunch of clueless Americans who think football revolves around quarterbacks and body armour hasn't changed much at all. Except, perhaps, the names on the team sheets - what was once a team littered with names like Gary, Paul, David, Rob et al is now adourned with such names as Christiano, Carlos, and Alessandro.
Yes, instantly recognisable British names they are.
But I digress. This isn't a blog about foreign players in the Premiership, although that is a concern.
This is about a bad side-effect these endless millions and fatcat investors have brought to the modern game - an instant demand for results.
As in, not even a demand for a gradual increase in results; a demand that almost verges on the point of clicking one's fingers and all of a sudden a club can be turned from mid-table fodder to Premiership all-conquerers in one big fat takeover.
We've seen this worrying trend already employed - just listen to many 'fans' on BBC's 606 football phone-in on any given evening to see for yourself, or just read through the sports section of any decent newspaper and see which manager has been sacked this week after a pathetically short amount of time. Two were binned last season after just one season in charge - Avram "I must never smile" Grant and Sven Goran-Ericksson both sacked despite successful seasons apeice. Tottenham did quite well last year and yet after a bad start this season the calls for Juande Ramos' head have reached ear-splitting levels. This trend is slowly seeping into rugby as well, despite there not nearly being as much money in rugby - Leicester Tigers dumped Marcello Loffreda at the end of last season despite having warmed the coach's chair for about five months, and Brian Ashton was barely celebrating his first year anniversary as boss of the England team before being unceremoniously, and very publicly, shoved out of Twickenham to make way for Martin Johnson, who presumably now has in his contract the condition that if he doesn't win absolutely everything left to win in the 2008-9 season, he'll be out, too.
Now, to paraphrase those bank adverts, it, erm, doesn't work like that.
Going back to Manchester United, they are an incredibly successful club who only last season netted both the Premiership and the Champions League - prooving beyond doubt that, right now anyway, they are not only the best in England, but the best in Europe.
Who do they have in charge? Sir Alex Ferguson, who probably took charge as the Berlin Wall fell down.
Over at Arsenal, we have another successful club, and their manager, Arsene Wenger, first arrived there roughly around the time Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait from Iraq. Or alternatively, when I was born. Okay, so this is an exaggeration in both cases, but you see my point. We're also beginning to see it at Liverpool - Rafa Benitez (very Scouse name, I must say) has been around a little while now, and the trophies have started to come in.
The point I'm making here is this. Just throwing money and big name players at a club doesn't equal success. Neither is talent dictated by the size of a player's transfer fee, and how many zeroes it has on the end of it. It all boils down to a lot more than that. And that is where patience must come in. A championship-winning club is not born overnight, it is developed.
This same principle applies on the international stage. Because in international football the simple solution of throw money at something and see what expensive players stick can't be applied, most people are just happy to bemoan the international team.
Of course, some of this scepticism is well-founded - England's rugby team have done a far better job on average in 20 years of World Cups than the football team have managed in over half a century, and not qualifying for Euro 2008 is something to be rightly ashamed of. But constantly kicking someone when they're down isn't going to help them get back on their feet, just the same as constantly critisicing and analysing England's every move is not going to help the concrete-faced Fabio Capello lift our team back up from where we are right now, which, let's face it, is international laughing stock.
I'll give you an example. Last night, Ashley Cole made one error. It did end up in Khazakstan (apologies if I've mis-spelled that) scoring their only goal of the match, but it was, in fact, not that much of a blunder - a simple split-second desicion that went wrong and was snatched upon by the Khazak striker. But, being the caring and supportive types they are, the fans in the stadium roundly booed him whenever he went near the ball afterwards. And despite the fact the final scoreline was a convincing 5-1 victory for the Three Lions, there was not one positive word to be said about the performance. Not one. It wasn't perfect, for sure, but more than anything this kind of attitude serves to strip respect away from the opposition - Khazakstan played better than anybody expected and were as commited and determined, if not as skilled, as their England counterparts. For England to come through with five goals in hand and, Cole's error aside, an umblemished defensive record, is worthy of some praise. Okay, so it's not perfect - but how many performances nowadays are? There were probably errors and imperfections in England's demolition of Croatia. Hell, the heroes of 1966 may not have played their best game ever against West Germany, but they still won, didn't they?
And in the end, this negative press all comes back to this wholesale lack of patience. Capello has not been in the job long, and it will take a while to drag England out of the depths and back to a more respectable position, if not contention for international trophies. The progress ball is beginning to gain momentum, and what Capello must now be allowed to do is keep the momentum building, and not to have it's path checked by the never-ending army of critics and doubters. Perhaps if everybody took a collective step back and allowed the England team to get on with it, then maybe, just maybe, the Three Lions will begin to roar again. But until everybody backs off, they are more than likely going to remain mewling cats rather than ferocious lions.