LogFAQs > #969937359

XIII_Rocks posted...

Um, yes? 2010 Germany were young and unproven, and that squad has Terry, Cole, Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney - proven world-class players in the latter stages of CL. Barry and Carrick were also both terrific players and Lennon was in hiscbest ever form around that time.

The big loss is Ferdinand, who typically performed well with Terry but missed that tournament.

It's some weird-ass revisionist history to say England's players in 2010 were anything less than excellent. Certainly a step below Spain's side at the time, but I wouldn't say anyone else's. Again, English teams got to CL finals almost every year around that time - often knocking out other English teams on the way - and the core of England's starting XI were key in those teams (Terry, Cole, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney. Barry was also excellent and would go on to win the title with City two years later, playing almost every league game).

There are weaknesses and Capello did his best to expose those weaknesses, but to say it's anything other than a very high-quality group of players is silly.

Also worth pointing out that England should have never played Germany in that tournament, because they failed to win a group that was just as easy as the one they had this time. Because of terrible management - and that's the thing about this discussion. You can make the argument for Germany, but there is absolutely no debate that England's team there was better than Algeria, USA, Slovenia and Ghana (who would have been the ro16 opponents). The criticism then must fall on Capello, and every piece of information about the awful preparation and execution that has come out since backs that up. He got it very badly, historically wrong.

Gerrard and Lampard never played well together. This is also the period when Ferguson was still active, who always pushed his United players to hate their rivals and care little for the NT. Carragher was 32 and this squad barely had a striker worth the name. Lennon might have been in the best ever form, but he was a Tottenham player, so his best wasn't that good anyway. You can say that Capello's incompetence made them not mesh, but while these players were good or great for their clubs, they just weren't when they were put together in the NT. No coach managed to get them to work. Germany's team might have been young, but guys like Schweinsteiger, Gmez, Podolski,... already had a great amount of caps, and guys like Khedira and Gmez had already won the Bundesliga with Stuttgart (!) at this point. They had the talent and the experience across the board. Give me that Germany side any day of the week.