Mirror UK
Defeat. Failure. Anger and anguish.
Not humiliation, yet,
although it will be if we come back from Belo Horizonte monstered by a
team of minnows again on Tuesday, 1950 revisited.
But the obvious
flaws, punished. Far too easily. The same old heartbreak, on a different
loop and in fresh surroundings. And in the final, brutal analysis,
huge questions for Roy Hodgson and his FA paymasters to answer, even if the Three Lions chief insisted he wants to stay on.
Last
night, it was perhaps inevitable that the agent of England’s
destruction would be Luis Suarez. He might have been in a wheelchair
less than a month ago, he can’t be even close to fully fit.
But he knows how to punish slapdash defending. And this England, for all their youthful promise, are the masters of slapdash defending.
Even
when Wayne Rooney appeared, finally to have banished his World Cup
hoodoo to give England hope, you could have guessed who would plunge the
knife. Rooney’s 40th England goal, his first in 10 World Cup games,
in the right place to steer home Glen Johnson’s cross, will now become
a mere statistic, one of many. The most damaging, bitter one, though,
was that England’s worst-ever World Cup showing – out after two games –
will be confirmed if Costa Rica win or draw with Italy in Recife
tonight. Even an Italian win will still require a footballing miracle.
Such an exit, no matter how much potential there is in the form of
Raheem Sterling, Daniel Sturridge, Ross Barkley and Adam Lallana, needs
to have a scapegoat, a villain, perhaps a victim.
You only had to
look at the pictures of Steven Gerrard, now entering the nightmare he
had warned of on Wednesday, to know how the bottom has fallen out of the
skipper’s world.
That horror slip against Chelsea, the collapse
at Crystal Palace and, last night, the inadvertent assist for his
Anfield club-mate.
Fernando Muslera, whose saves had kept out
England when the frame of the goal did not come to his rescue, pumped
forward and the ball skimmed off Gerrard’s head. Suarez, of course, was
alert, alive, too quick for Phil Jagielka, too clever for a nerve-ridden
Joe Hart, his finish lightning quick.
As Hodgson ruefully
reflected, “He doesn’t miss from that area’’. He did not and England had
no comeback. But that was the gamble, the high-wire act. As against
Italy, when you fall off and have no safety net, you have to pay the
ultimate price.
Hodgson knew that, too. He risked everything by loading the side with
attacking players, opting for a central two, leaving the back line
exposed.
It is impossible not to wonder whether John Terry, had
Hodgson been able to entice him out of international retirement, would
have dealt with Edinson Cavani’s cross for the opener better than
Jagielka, who allowed Suarez to drift in behind him.
Likewise, as
Hodgson admitted when he named his 23, there was a danger that he would
look to have erred in trusting in Leighton Baines and leaving Ashley
Cole, the best defensive left-back in the country, out altogether.You
can’t build a garden shed without putting in proper foundations, let
alone a castle to put up against the world. The fortress was stormed,
overrun, with little effort or guile.
Those arguments will only have gained in currency after last night.
