We are going home

Kiev's Olympic Stadium: the scene of England's crime

It was a massacre in all but the score line and even the most ardent of England fans couldn't deny the better team won.

Nevertheless, as the penalty shoot out began it didn’t prevent a wave of optimism when Riccardo Montolivo missed his penalty for Italy, giving England the advantage that they soon squandered after tame efforts from Ashley Young and the normally reliable Ashley Cole.

The English section of the stadium was something akin to a morgue after the defeat. Many of which were younger fans, the older ones now almost getting used to such failures. The younger ones just staring into the abyss like so many of the more senior supporters have done in Turin, Wembley, Shizouka and Gelsenkirchen.

As for the game itself, oh how we missed Jack Wilshere. Our inability to keep the ball has been well documented and the silky passing of the young Arsenal midfielder would have been essential if we'd had any hopes of having a major impact on this tournament.

Even the evergreen Paul Scholes would have been a more welcome addition to the pitch than the underwhelming introduction of Jordan Henderson.

As majestic as Italy’s Andrea Pirlo was, this tweet from Michael Owen shortly after England’s exit summed up the absence of Scholes: ‘Pirlo was awesome but we have a player of a similar age and equally as good. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there. #Scholes.’

Some may have viewed him coming out of retirement as regressive step but do you think the Italians would readily discard Pirlo, or the Spanish Xavi, in such a hurry? I think not.

Anyway, back to the England fans, who behaved impeccably throughout Sunday night’s game, thoughts were already turning towards Brazil. The endless optimism of an England fan is both reprehensible and admirable in equal measure. 

We just hope we have more ball retainers than ball hoofers next time out. Joe Hart’s endless long balls towards Andy Carroll became a familiar theme during the heartbreaking defeat to Italy.

But where there are young midfield starlets like Wilshere and Manchester United’s Tom Cleverley there is hope. My goodness we need it. We are going home, we are going we going home (but we’ll be back). See you in Brazil in 2014, providing we qualify of course.

From the index to his captain having sex: the stumble and fall of Fabio Capello

It is almost two years to the day since the now ex-England boss Fabio Capello's decline began with the ill-fated 'Capello index'. This was a weird notion where points would be awarded for the overall performance of each player, then even more bizarrely making that information public.

It is as if ever since that day things just seemed to have gone from bad to worse for the former Real Madrid boss.

He was a hugely successful manager with a CV as glowing as you could possibly want, titles in Spain and Italy, not to mention a Champions League winner. He had spells with something not too dissimilar to a who's who of European football (Roma, AC Milan, Juventus and Madrid).

For the first two years it looked like the English Football Association had finally found their man. A proven winner who was continuing that rich vein of form for his new employers.

England qualified for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with consummate ease and Don Fabio could do no wrong. Then came the index and it all began to unravel just prior to FIFA's showpiece event.

Bad preparation

After the index, there was the decision to play England at altitude in their friendlies prior to the last World Cup, as well as base them at a training camp in Rustenburg 1500 metres above sea level in South Africa and not giving the players sufficient rest from the rigours of a Premier League season.

Graeme Souness was highly critical of such preparation. He told  The Sun: "Your body is demanding oxygen.

Your brain is telling your kidneys 'I need more EPO' which is a growth hormone which helps you produce more red blood cells, which enables you to push more oxygen through your body.

"So, for three or four weeks that's happening, so you're going down and down and down. After that, you start to recover."

The players looked laboured throughout the debacle in South Africa and Capello has to take some repsonsibility for that.

The wrong squad in South Africa

There was immense surprise and disappointment at the decision to omit Theo Walcott from his squad for the 2010 World Cup. Then news filtered through that he wanted to take Owen Hargreaves who had not started a game for nearly two years. Sir Alex Ferguson ridiculed the idea of taking his non-playing crippled midfieler. Capello eventually plumped for Gareth Barry, who also looked well short of fitness having not played for the last two months of the season.

The wrong goalkeeper

Then we had the lamentable situation regarding the number one jersey in South Africa. It was clear to all and sundry that the most talented goalkeeper in the squad was Joe Hart. Capello claimed he lacked experience, but it was the manager's fault for that lack of game time for not picking him prior to the tournament, particularly in the friendly against Ghana three months before the World Cup began.

The wrong formation

We had one decent striker going into that World Cup - Wayne Rooney (albeit his performances never lived up to expectations). The best thing to have done would be to have played Rooney up front with Steven Gerrard in support. From Gary Lineker to Michael Owen, it was clear to all the experts the way to go but our £6 million a year head coach could not spot it.

Capello claimed that English players only new how to play 4-4-2. The 65 year-old clearly hadn't watched much football in recent years as he would have seen English clubs dominate the Champions League with just one up top in something that could be described as anything but 4-4-2. Furthermore, Rooney had performed remarkable feats as the lone frontman, and Gerrard had had a similarly successful season playing as an attacking midfielder (behind Torres).

Captain not so fantastic

What I just do not get with this whole John Terry business is it was Capello who was angry with JT after his now infamous press conference in South Africa, undermining the Italian with his comments about standing up to the coaching staff.

It was also Capello who stripped Terry of the captaincy for a far less serious issue (sleeping with the ex-girlfriend of a former team-mate) than we are currently dealing with.

Then we see the Italian gifting him back the armband soon after the World Cup, and now apparently resigning as he did not want to see the Chelsea centre-half lose the captaincy once more.

Just to add to the confusion, Capello has always stated his amusement at the English fascination with the whole importance of who the captain is.

Finally on this whole JT story: why on earth has the trial been postponed until July anyway? Ron Gourlay, Chelsea's chief executive, informed the judge it would be impossible for all the necessary witnesses to appear in court due to work commitments. First of all that's rubbish. And even if it were true, completely irrelevant. You cannot skip a court appearance due to such frivolous reasons.

Anyway, I digress, Fabio's reputation, at least in England, is in tatters and the guy who accused him of 'killing' Gerrard a couple of years ago for playing the Liverpool man out of position has a stock that could not be any higher. Maybe Paul Gascoigne calling him 'Sir' Harry earlier this evening on Sky Sports was not so ill-placed afterall.