If you have not been following this, the long and short of it is, Der Kaiser has pronounced his verdict on English football.
It is still “kick and rush”. England has not progressed from those Neanderthal days when Scotland shocked them with a passing game in the 1860s. They had never seen anything quite like it before. The US managed to do the same to them last Saturday and England responded by airlifting the ball.
The remarks have not gone well with the England think tank and its players. Since Der Kaiser is German, these developments could affect diplomatic relationships between the two countries, already in a state of delicate equilibrium since Basil Fawlty.
So here is Fabio Capello, an Italian, shooting back at the Kaiser:
“But it’s easy to speak about teams when you stay in the stands. You have to see the match [in the flesh]”
Except the problem is that Beckenbauer is no ordinary fan, he has seen enough matches as a player and a manager in a lifetime in the sport to be able to say authoritatively without actually “seeing the match in the flesh”. There are other ways. Maybe that’s why his opinion stings. But is it really true?
Actually, the statistics don’t really bear his words out. England used a lot of long passes but so did the Germans. The latter just happened to be far more accurate. In short passes, England actually fared better than the Germans. The only relevant statistic in the end was that the Germans capitalized on their chances whereas England was unable to do so.
But this dust up really shows how England has had to battle distractions which seem to come out of nowhere left field.