Was going to post this in the Ashes thread but figured somebody other than Bandage or Appendage might want to read it.
Anyway it’s an odd combination but in England many of their international teams possess this huge arrogance that you get with elite sportsmen but they’ve missed out a hugely important stage of their mental development and they lack fundamental self belief. You see it with the soccer team all the time. They’re built up and hyped up by the media for every major tournament and they start buying into their own hype. Then it comes down to a penalty shoot-out and these same superstars’ reputations are built on such fragile foundations that they crumble to pieces and they miss from 12 yards.
Something similar is happening in the Ashes. There’s a swagger about England that suggests they’re on a par with Australia. They talk the talk and after the first day of the last 2 tests they’ve been speaking about how disappointing it was that they lost the first test(s) because they have it figured out now. Then when they get into a winning position they disintegrate. It’s not just that they can’t close out a victory - they visibly corrode under pressure and the basics of their sport dessert them.
Arrogance on the sporting field is generally a good thing - for elite players. New Zeland in rugby, Munster at a more local level, Australia at cricket, Chelsea in the EPL, Celtic in the SPL. These guys believe they are the best but they have developed that self belief over the years on the basis of genuine achievements. As a result they win all their tight games and don’t give inferior opponents a chance. England’s international teams on the other hand are very ordinary in many instances but when the big competitions come around they somehow believe they’re as good as anyone. Then they all fall apart.
Am I talking Ball ox or have I unearthed something (or more likely is this common knowledge)?
That’s why I still maintain that Michael Vaughan’s captaincy in the last Ashes series was the greatest display of captaincy and leadership in any sport, in any era, ever.
Because they are so brittle mentally and have shown in this series that they can fall to pieces when the ante is upped. It struck me that England and Wales as a team came into the series having won the Ashes back in 2005 and yet they still didn’t believe they could win it. Sure there’s individuals like Pietersen who can hold his head up high but as an XI they played with fear. It was shown by Harmison’s first ball of the series in Brisbane, the last day capitulation in Adelaide and then their batting in the first innings in Perth after they had got into a really strong position through Monty’s bowling.
That said I think the E&W cricket team are by and large a good bunch of lads as opposed to some of the vile characters in the England football team.
This is quite an aside but watching the last 20 minutes of the ManU game yesterday and following on from Rooney’s 180 minutes of anonymity against Celtic I thought of the debate some of us had in the pub a few weeks back:
‘Wayne Rooney - peaked at the age of 18 in Euro 2004?’
I recall having a discussion with people whose sporting opinions I respect last year and we were discussing the best players in the world. At the time Ronaldinho was peerless and everyone agreed with that. Then most other people suggested Ronney was the next best player. I argued that he was and is no better than Messi - he has bags of potential and most of the right attributes to be a world class strker but he’s not there yet.
A year has passed and to me he hasn’t developed as a footballer. He doesn’t find himself in the box often enough to be a top class striker. So you might expect him to play in a deeper role but he tends not to go by people. For me the role he plays at the moment is he plays out wide mostly and comes in off his wing and gets the ball 20-25 yards out to have a shot. He has a great shot on him but so does Tomas Hitzelsperger.
Not writing the guy off completely as a talent but unquestionably he has an awful long way to go before he can be considered a great player, no matter how much Dunphy may disagree.