Rooney or Gerard gets a knock and an anxiety frenzy sets in or will Barry be fit for the world cup? While England’s lack of depth is obvious, their approach to this year’s world cup preparation is self defeatist in a mental sense, an attitude which somehow also explains the poor record in penalty shot outs. Capello is a good coach with a group of nice players to tutor for a great football fiesta, a job in did perfectly during the qualifiers, but there is this feeling now that
England is preparing for a cup final, a one match event where you need all your best players to start the game. Any indication a player won’t be fully fit spreads this uncomfortable suggestion that the team will be missing something special. Capello may have a solid team of psychologist, but that is hardly an invitation to accumulate stressors.


The road to the finals is paved by tenuous pillars in the frame of six tough matches, of which the first three is likely to be routine is ease, but beyond that England must prove their mettle. The best way to achieve this is to develop a belief and confidence in those players that may start from the bench. This works both ways. A Rooney or a Gerard is more likely to play to his full potential if he knows that his absence would not necessarily derail the overall ambition of the team. This is the extra edge winning teams tend to have. Dunga went ahead to name is 23-man team and excluded those he wanted to from the outset. It may not be a perfect team, but in players like Ramires, Nilmar and Grafite, there is belief that if they are called upon, which they may not, they will deliver. That sense of completeness, even if artificial is a propellant of immerse value.

This one match mentality has often perpetuated the duplicity of Gerard and Lampard playing together in the same match in similar positions with only cosmetic differences because everyone should be accommodated. Compare England with Brazil where effective roles are created for Alves and Maicon. The three lions are in for a turbulent world cup with this rigid obsession with a team of static eleven players because in the second round, there are bound to face Serbia or Germany, two rugged teams with tactical discipline and beyond that stage, is Brazil in the quarters.