Send in the Clowns

Appalling. Abysmal. Dire. Dreadful. Shapeless. It’s all too easy to fire up the adjectives that damn England’s performance against Croatia. And the reason it’s so easy is because they’re all justified.

The truth is that the manner of England’s defeat in Zagreb, on the back of a desperately disappointing goalless draw at home to Macedonia, was embarrassing. For too long we have been invited to believe that the England team is packed with world class superstars, so who will explain how a Croatian side representing a small nation and consisting of players who are household names only within that nation should be able to dominate proceedings and win so convincingly?

Arguably the most embarrassing feature of the evening was the post-match performance of the inept Steve McClaren, who marshalled as sickening a collection of meaningless clichés as we have heard in a very long time – starting with the outrageously inaccurate “Once we’d got over that first 15 minutes…I felt as if we’d controlled it” and moving on to “in the end it wasn’t to be”; “there’s still a long way to go in this group”; “it’s going to be difficult”; “criticism is part of the job” and that exasperating old chestnut “we’ve got to stick together”.

Most of the time, his players performed as though they had indeed been ‘stuck together’ and there was no evidence whatsoever that the dream team of McClaren and Venables on the sidelines were anything but powerless to improve the situation.

So you can forget about all the talk of the honeymoon period being over. Much more of this rubbish and someone will be heading for the divorce court.