World Cup 2010: Day nine

Two games down and it’s not looking good is it. In fact, it’s looking decidedly bad. Last night, England somehow managed to conjure up a performance that made their exploits against the USA six days earlier look heroic.

Devoid of both imagination and spirit, it’s hard to remember a worse performance from England in a World Cup. It was a night when English football shifted into reverse and the progress made by Fabio Capello over the last two years seemed to be washed away in the space of 90 painful minutes.

It was almost as if we had gone back in time to the dark days of the early 90s - when Graham Taylor presided over a shambolic England team that regularly included the gangly legs of Carlton Palmer. Just like then, the collection of players representing England last night - I think it’s stretching it a bit to call them a team - played a style of football desperately lacking in creativity. Passing was woeful and defending barely any better.

Much of the blame will fall on the sizeable shoulders of Emile Heskey. So much has already been said about Heskey’s dismal goal scoring record for England, and almost the whole country questions what exactly it is he brings to the team. But putting things in to perspective, Heskey has done OK in both games that England have played. By no means has he been good, but he’s played to his admittedly limited ability, and the criticism he has received would be better targeted in the direction of Wayne Rooney.

Rooney is supposedly the star of the England team. The current PFA Player of the Year, he was predicted to be the spark that ignited the fire in England’s collective belly, and would drive them on to a certain tournament victory. To say he has failed to live up to expectations would probably take the prize of understatement of the century. Last night, he failed to complete even rudimentary tasks such as controlling the ball and passing it to a team mate. And judging by his comments to the cameras after the game, Rooney wasn’t happy about the reception the players got as they left the field last night.

To be honest, I’m with Wayne on this one. Surely the thousands of fans who have raided their life savings; jeopardised relationships, jobs and friendships to travel half way around the world should have the decency to applaud, nay cheer, their team off the pitch after enduring an absolute abomination of a performance? In all seriousness, Rooney’s reaction was a disgrace and he should publicly apologise for it.

Being a Manchester United player, he’s probably not used to his own fans expressing displeasure with the team, but he really should wake up and come join us all back in the real world. The very least that performance deserved was booing and Rooney himself should take a fair share of responsibility himself.

Maybe Capello could have prepared his players for this reaction though. For instance, had he flooded the team with West Ham players, they would have been perfectly comfortable with being jeered from the field and there would be none of the childish reactions that we saw from Rooney and others. To be honest, they would also have been perfectly comfortable with playing the aimless, error-stricken football that England have so far served up - so Scott Parker, Mark Noble and the other eligible players who didn’t make the squad are no doubt at home thinking they would have fitted straight in under Capello.

Let’s hope that the booing, or Rooney’s reaction to the booing, does not deflect attention away from the utter awfulness of England’s performance last night though. The squad need to know how poor they were. They need to know how angry supporters are with them. And they need to know that what they delivered last night - that pathetic excuse for a display of footballing prowess - is nowhere near good enough and will not be accepted by the fans.

Judging by the reaction of the press and the pubs so far, if the players take on board even a fraction of the criticism coming their way, we will see a dramatic improvement in the hugely important fixture against Slovenia on Wednesday afternoon. The people are angry and demanding more, but more importantly we still have hope. We hope that Rooney regains his blistering form of last season. We hope whoever comes in for the suspended Jamie Carragher looks more convincing than the latter did. We hope that England’s most creative player, Joe Cole, gets at least some time on the pitch to express himself. And we hope, although maybe no longer believe, that this is our year.