Same old story

As England crawl wearily from the wreckage of yet another failed World Cup campaign, thoughts turn as ever towards the appointment of a scapegoat, and this latest catastrophe on the biggest stage of all provides a clear one. Unfortunately for England fans, the blame to progress beyond the second round for the first time in 1998 lies not with the easy target of officialdom (despite the prepostrousness of their decision to disallow Frank Lampard's goal in the first half) but with the manager in whom so many hopes were vested. Though the players who trotted confidently on - and forlornly off - the pitch at Bloemfontein must, as ever, shoulder their fair share of responsibility for this latest shambles, the manager must step up and admit that he erred repeatedly when it came to team selection, tactics and general stewardship of this England team.

It is all the more heartbreaking to say this, because an almost unprecedented level of trust was bestowed upon Capello, despite the misgivings many fans had before the tournament started. Many of us hoped that the manager would succeed in spite our collective apprehension and unlike several of his predecessors, most recently Steve McClaren, we take no pleasure in saying, "I told you so" as we sit here debating the merits of leaving Theo Walcott at home and not playing Wayne Rooney up front on his own. Instead, we are gutted, almost disbelievingly, that this most decorated of coaches has failed to take England further even than Sven Goran Eriksson, whose tenure, which included (lest we forget) two successive, narrowly-lost World Cup quarter final appearances, posthumously acquires a degree of respect no England fan would have imagined six months ago. And yet, as with all football teams, from Sunday to Premier League, the buck has to stop with the manager and this time the case against him borders on unequivocal.

The Lampard non-goal might have changed things but even then, the performance against Germany was impoverished, even by the dismal standards that England had so far mustered in this tournament. And yet, whatever the cynics might cry as they highlight the repeated failings of the national team in previous World Cups and European Championships, this scoreline at the hands of this manager is still a major shock. Capello simply does not lose like this. His CV, one of the most impressive of all coaches in the world right now, is a testament to that. Yet here we are, staring blankly at the most unimpressive of statistics, that England have just suffered their heaviest defeat in the World Cup finals since 1954. How did this happen? How did the team that swept past all but one of their opponents in qualifying with the ease of the Romans conquering western Europe, end up on the receiving end of their biggest World Cup thrashing in almost 60 years?

My personal view, and that which I am sure is shared by many desolate England fans, is that the manager fatally misunderstood the requirements of a team setting out to win the World Cup. This is a fact that is desperately disappointing to confront, because our form in qualifying was so electric that even the most hard-nosed of pundits would have made us an outside bet for becoming champions. Yet, for reasons only he must know, Capello choked when it came to the big decisions at the tournament proper and I will list the mistakes I believe he has made over the past four weeks since his final squad for South Africa was announced.

1. Taking the oldest England ever to the World Cup. Italy proved in 2006 that age need not necessarily be a barrier to triumph but the reliance on players who had proven time and time again that they could not perform at the highest of levels for England ultimately cost us dear. Lampard, Gerrard and Terry are but three who had been unable to step up to the plate for their country in previous tournaments and, a few individual moments of quality aside, so they did again. Capello made a conscious decision, both in qualifying and his final squad selection for the finals, to prize experience over the X factor of untested youth, yet the Germans, buoyed by the brilliance of 22 year old Mesut Ozil, showed that quality is the only thing that really matters.

2. Omitting Theo Walcott and Adam Johnson from the final 23. Few England fans agreed with this decision at the time, and even fewer will defend it now. It is a point closely tied into my first, but the bare facts remain that Capello dropped a player who scored a brilliant hatrick against Croatia in qualifying and another youngster who was up there with the best wingers in the Premier League in the second half of last season. In their place came Sean Wright-Phillips and Joe Cole, both of whom did the grand total of sod all in England's 4 games after seasons for their clubs in which neither was a regular starter. Madness.

3. The selection of Matthew Upson. And I don't just mean against Germany, but in the squad full stop. Upson is an average player who's been fortunate enough to look half-decent standing alongside John Terry against a succession of mediocre teams in England qualifiers and friendlies. After a shaky start, he looked ok against a limited (and 25th ranked in the world) Slovenia team. Against a promising young German side, he looked every bit as hopeless as the team with whom he very almost got relegated last season. Can any England fan seriously justify his inclusion ahead of the likes of Michael Dawson and Phil Jagielka?

4. The stubborn refusal to play 4-5-1. The argument always went that Capello would build the team around his best players who, with only the smallest murmur of dissent, are Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard. And yet, for all four of the games that England limped through in South Africa 2010, not once was either player stationed in best position. Rooney scored goals for fun alongside Emile Heskey in the early qualifying matches but his game has evolved considerably over the past twelve months and his development into one of the world's most lethal lone frontmen was recognised by players and pundits alike when he was justifiably named PFA Player of the Year back in April. Gerrard, similarly, played his best football of the last two seasons when he was moved forward by his club manager Rafael Benitez to play as a creator and second striker behind the brilliant Fernando Torres at Liverpool. And yet not once over the past year has Capello ever chosen to play these two world class talents in tandem, with Gerrard shunted out to the left and Rooney forced to drop deep to support a non-scoring frontman. Few great teams, either at club or international level, still play with two up front and after England's desperate showing in South Africa, even fewer will now.

5. The selection of unfit players. Throughout his early tenure, Capello frequently made the point that he would avoid the mistakes of his predecessors and only select players who were fit and in form. And so it proved when he controversially omitted David Beckham in his first squad as the former England captain was on the verge of collecting a 100th cap and later left out Theo Walcott and Joe Cole when the two former regulars were unconvincingly working their way back to fitness with their clubs. Yet all of this went out the window in South Africa, with desperate consequences. Ledley King, a player unable even to train with his team mates due to a dehibiliting knee injury, was recalled after two years in the wilderness ahead of other defenders, such as Phil Jagielka, who had not only England experience, but also form and fitness heading into the tournament. Gareth Barry was selected as our sole holding midfield, despite being ruled out of the opening USA game with an ankle injury that kept him sidelined for 4 weeks, and the pitiful displays he put in when he did finally return to the fold for the Algeria game onwards were a terrible indictment of Capello's decision to omit two of the Premier League's most outstanding defensive-minded midfield players, Gareth Barry and Tom Huddlestone, from his final 23. Capello's insistence in picking Wayne Rooney, a player seemingly bereft of the form and fitness that made him every fan's player of the year prior to the knee injury he suffered in April, for all four of England's World Cup games might, given the striker's undoubted pedigree, be forgiven but in the aftermath of Rooney's abysmal performances in South Africa, we would have to take up Capello even on this.

6. Not putting David James in goal against the USA. Capello had been claiming for over six months that he knew who his goalkeeper would be when England lined up for their first World Cup game against the United States, yet few predicted that he had chosen the decidedly average West Ham shot-stopper Rob Green to be his number one. Neither form nor experience in the big tournaments seemed to count when Capello left England's World Cup goalie of 2006 Paul Robinson at home, despite a decent season for Blackburn Rovers, but the decision to install Green ahead of the brilliant rookie Joe Hart and the reassuringly evergreen David James made even less sense. In the end, Green's England career was all but destroyed after that howler versus the USA and James emerged as one of England's few bright spots in his three games between the posts. How different things might have been if he'd have been in goal from the start...

7. The substitutions. Despite leaving the potential game-changing talents of Adam Johnson and Theo Walcott at home (sigh when you remember Walcott's devastation of the AC Milan's defence in the final minutes of Arsenal's last 16 encounter at the San Siro in 2008, or his match-changing, goal-scoring cameo against Barcelona earlier this year...), Capello still had a handful of players on his bench for the Germany game that he could have brought on to create or score a goal in the dying minutes. Peter Crouch might have seemed the obvious choice in such circumstances but instead Capello opted for Emile Heskey, a player who hadn't scored a competitive goal for his country in the best part of a decade.

When Capello was first given the England job, most fans and commentators believed that if Capello couldn't lead us to World Cup glory then no one could. Yet while his CV at club level remains unblemished, it is difficult to describe his first foray into international management as anything other than a disaster. In his qualifyers we excelled against some poor to average teams; in his friendlies we were often beaten by sides ranked more highly than we were; and finally, and crushingly, in his World Cup finals, we put in some of the worst performances in living memory. In the end, Fabio Capello simply was not up to the job.

Jonny