Give him a break

In England, the media and the hard core fans, expect their national football team to win every game, and win every game by a 4 goal margin. This is because the English are the best, or at least they think they are. So they think they should always win. Any defeat by a nation ranked lower than them is an embarrassment, and any time the side strings together more than two poor games in a row, there are calls for the manager to be sacked. On the same token, any time the side wins, there is praise granted beyond that which is deserved; poorly played 1-0 victories are enough for the arrogant English fans and media. This leaves faults unaddressed and uncorrected; which, in the end leads to losses.

The English football media need to take some kind of responsibility for the poor form of their national side. There is no room for error, no chance for improvement or development. England must be the best, all the time. Any mistakes or errors are utterly lambasted and magnified many times greater than their actual significance. One of Sven’s problems, probably because he was the first foreign person to manage England, was that he was so constantly attacked by the media, and not just about football. Sven was too afraid to try anything new, because if you try something new and different, you run the risk of it not working, and when that happens, the press get their claws out. So it was comfortable and relatively low risk to pick the same squad of players and use the same tactics. If he tried something different and it didn’t work, then he knew the kind of punishment he would receive from the media, so he didn’t.

Now, unbelievably, some are asking whether Steven McLaren should be sacked. Give the guy a break. He tried something new last night, it didn’t work out, he made a few mistakes; but it will be his ability to learn from those mistakes that will make his side better. Sometimes to work out a winning formula, one needs to try things a few different ways, and some of those ways don’t work out. Understanding why it didn’t work out and learning from that, helps to achieve that winning formula. This whole process is made a lot more difficult if there is no room given to make any mistakes.

So give Steve McLaren a chance, stop being so arrogant and then mauling the England team when they don’t massage your arrogance. Try giving the opposition a little credit for playing well, instead of being so patronising. You must first be humble, before you can be great.