England were ill prepared for the World Cup and will not win the trophy until the Football Association undergoes radical changes, said an Englishman who has lifted the top prize in rugby.
”Our overall performance was so abject that it merely proved that English international football needs to be modernised and reinvented from top to bottom if we’re ever going to win another trophy,” former England rugby coach Clive Woodward said.
”The FA need to take a long hard look at themselves. Do they even know what has to be done? There’s massive scope for change and the time is now,” he told FourFourTwo magazine.
”To lose in the manner we did is unforgivable and cannot be allowed to continue if we’re serious about ever winning a major tournament,” said Woodward, who led England to victory in the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
England travelled to the World Cup in Germany as one of the favourites to win the trophy for the first time since 1966. They reached the quarterfinals in unconvincing fashion before losing to Portugal on penalties following a 0-0 draw after extra time.
Lack of preparation
”Look at every single thing that went wrong,” said Woodward listing poor penalty kicks, Wayne Rooney’s red card in the quarterfinal, underperforming leading players and the inclusion in the squad of untested teenager Theo Walcott.
”Each was caused by a fundamental lack of preparation,” former rugby international Woodward, now second division Southampton’s director of football, told the latest issue of the specialist monthly magazine.
”The chances of winning a World Cup without coming through a shoot-out are small so to not prepare adequately is both criminal and amateur.
”Man for man, we had better players than Portugal, better perhaps than any of the semifinalists. We failed because the team was not properly prepared,” he said.
The other semifinalists were hosts Germany, France and Italy, who beat the French on penalties in the final in Berlin on Sunday.
England returned home unbeaten but were unimpressive in an easy group in which they struggled to beat Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago and were held 2-2 by Sweden and then only managed a scrappy 1-0 win over Ecuador in the second round. – Reuters