England's Failure

[Davyjones]

For those of us who follow football/soccer, what did you all think of England's failure to get into Euro 2008? I was not very happy. And apparently neither was the FA. They pretty much immediately fired Macca. I did question his pulling of Robinson and putting in Wright-Phillips for Beckham. It reminded me of when Greg Ryan pulled Hope Solo for Briana Scurry in the Women's World Cup this year. I will never stop backing the Three Lions (unless they're playing against the U.S.), but I was very disappointed in their performance yesterday. And they are probably getting skewered by the British media too. I feel for them.

What do you all think?

[Dznygrl79]

Things did look disappointing yesterday, I didn't get to see everything but it was very disheartening. I've spent the better part of today cooking so I haven't visited around online to see the fal out but as soon as the bird is out of the oven I may have to....
It is realy sad when someone makes a bad judgement call and it costs them their job. Have you heard anything about his reasoning about the call?

Oh well I'm a Liverpool fan and you learn to take the ups and downs

And in my opinion England is almost always better then any MLS team.

[Davyjones]

I haven't heard anything about why Macca decided to make the switches. Probably replaced Becks with SWP because of SWP's "match fitness" level compared to Becks'. I have no idea why he switched Robinson with Carson. He probably wishes he didn't now.

As a fellow Kopite, I feel the same ups and downs that you do.

And, yes, England is still better than any MLS team. They are a national team after all.

[RAIDER]

To DavyJones Cheers for those kind words concerning our football team ...

Well for starters Scott Carson should never have played it should have been David James .I understand why Wright Phillips was played instead of Beckham at the start ,this was due to Beckhams lack of match fitness ....

However the real reason England didnt qualify is basically there are too many big egos in England team and no manager has been strong enough to leave certain people on the bench .This was the fault of Mc Claren and he had to go .

The only positive thing to come out of this is that there will be a massive shake up within the English game now and i think a few of the so called stars of football will be keeping a low profile due to there lackluster performances .

We should have won that group easy but we didnt nor did we deserve to go through so good luck Russia and Croatia next summer

[Davyjones]

Who would be your choice to manage the England side now? Lots of talk that they shoould offer it to Mourinho (I don't think this will happen) or Scolari (for the millionth time). Who would you offer the job to? I personally have no choice to offer.

I have also seen reports that Rafa would be interested. I wonder what that rotational policy would look like.

[RAIDER]

For me i would love to see Jurgen Klinnsman and there are strong rumours hes interested ..However how he will go down in England will be another thing all together ..Jose Mourhino would be my second choice but according to the media hes not interested ...

To cap it off England have drawn Croatia in the world cup qualifiers !!!

[Rhetoric2000]

I had thought that Harry Redknapp would be a decent replacement, but he has plenty on his plate just at the moment.

I agree with Raider that Klinsmann is a top quality manager.

While Mourinho as the England manager would represent something of a fiery combination, he would not be scared of making the tough calls and tough attitudes that is required to manage a group of often complacent and usually underacheiving players.

Steve McClaren was never the man, though and I almost feel a bit sorry for him that he was asked in the first place to do a job for which he was so patently unsuited. Dropping Robinson was justified but surely with James replacing him and youngsters (Shorey, Bentley, Agbonlahor, Young) have been brought in - done well and then been dropped for other youngsters with no apparent reasoning.

And can we please stop putting Tottenham reserves in the squad for a change, eight years of Kieron Dyer has been quite enough.

[Davyjones]

Well. Fabio Capello. I never thought the FA would go after him. What do you all think of Capello? I like him because he coached Real Madrid (my 2nd favorite team) to the championship last season, but that whole scandal when he was with Juventus still bothers me.

Do you think he was the right choice? How do you think he'll do?

[The Reservoir Dog]

There is no doubting Capello's pedigree. He has won the Championships with each club he has managed. However Eriksson had a good pedigree and look what happened there. However, Capello will demand the discipline in the players that Eriksson couldn't.

Here in England the feelings are very mixed. Why haven't we gone for an English manager? Have we even got the best Italian manager after all Marcello Lippi has won the World Cup?

All I can say is that let's give the man a chance and see what he can do.