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England’s soccer dilemma

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One of the favorites to win this year’s FIFA world cup tournament in South Africa is England. After all, it’s home to one of the top professional soccer leagues on the planet. But England only won a world championship once, way back in 1966 and The World’s Alex Gallafent (an England fan) is now worried that the English team is unraveling less than 100 days from kick-off. (flickr image by .imelda)

• BBC World Cup coverage

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MARCO WERMAN:  Argentina’s national soccer team struggled to qualify for this year’s World Cup.  Even so, they’ll be among the favorites when the tournament starts in South Africa.  Another one of the favorites is England.  It’s home to one of the top professional soccer leagues on the plant.  But the omens for England don’t look good this year.  The World’s Alex Gallafent knows all about that.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  Alright, well I guess I can’t disguise the fact that I’m an England fan.  And every time the World Cup comes along, we England fans have to go on a kind of Kubler Ross style emotional journey, you know the stages of grief.  First stage, you look back.  You remember the glory days of 1966; England’s only World Cup victory.  And if you don’t remember it firsthand, you bask in the mythology.  Next stage, you dare to dream.  A new crop of young players surfaces and maybe this is the year.  Of course that’s assuming England qualify for the tournament.  That’s not always a given.  This time around though, England qualified for the World Cup with ease, dare I say panache?  And yet, qualification leads to another stage, reality check.  You recognize that the English team is not, in fact, made up of flinty superheroes who can dribble the ball around the feet of ten Brazilian wizards.  They’re English.  And that takes us to where we are now, the stage shortly before a tournament begins.  I call it the unraveling.  Today there was news that England’s coaches and players have been spied upon, their meetings secretly recorded.  It’s unclear how or by whom.  England’s soccer authorities have issued warnings that the release of the tapes would be illegal.  But still, it’s what they call a distraction ahead of the World Cup campaign.  And distractions are key to the unraveling.  Already this year, England’s captain, a married man, was demoted for allegedly having an affair with the ex-girlfriend of a former club teammate.  Got that?  Then the teammate, another valuable player for England decided to withdraw from the squad because he didn’t want to play alongside his allegedly two-timing former friend.  Talk about distraction.  A classic unraveling also requires a significant injury or two.  When David Beckham broke a bone in his foot shortly before the World Cup in 2002, the word on every England fan’s lips was metatarsal.  And like clockwork, England players are dropping like flies ahead of this year’s tournament in South Africa.  Two key defenders are currently out with a broken foot and a broken ankle, respectively.  But English hearts need not be broken.  Take the example set by Italy.  In 1982 the striker Paulo Rossi was banned from soccer for match-fixing, a huge distraction.  Rossi returned to the Italian team just a month before the World Cup.  He scored six goals and Italy won.  And then in 2006 Italian soccer was rocked by another match-fixing scandal.  Many Italian players were implicated, at least by association, en enormous distraction.  Italy won again.  And that’s where England’s silver lining may lie.  The final stage, victory, may be in reach.  The England coach is an Italian.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

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