Sod Off Then, England

That's it then, England thrashed 4-1 by Germany after a shamefully bad start to their World Cup campaign. I really don't know what happened to England (although Tim Newman has some pretty good ideas). Whether the players are good or bad, they lacked fire and they really didn't hang together as a team. Manager Capello seemed clueless.

Here's my plan:

1) Capello must go. If he has any morals, he'll resign. Otherwise the English FA will have to sack him (I suppose it's too much to expect there's any kind of clause in his contract that says they don't have to pay him five year's worth of salary if he turns out to be a charlatan who cannot choose, train and motivate an England team that can actually win games).

2) Future England managers to be on one- or two- year contracts. Ability to speak English highly recommended.

3) No Premier League players allowed to play for England. Really. These guys might be good for their clubs, but hardly any of them in this World Cup demonstrated the slightest bit of interest in playing well for England.

And as for FIFA...

The disallowed England goal didn't help - it could well have changed the course of the game, but England were still outclassed by Germany. What it did do, though, is show in no uncertain terms (cliché alert) that FIFA's attitude to the 21st century is completely dinosaur-driven, blinkered and stupid. The old dinosaur himself, Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, said after the last decision (in March this year) not to introduce goal-line technology:

"The application of modern technologies can be very costly, and therefore not applicable on a global level. The universality of the game: one of the main objectives of FIFA is to protect the universality of the game of association football. This means that the game must be played in the same way no matter where you are in the world..."

No Sepp, it doesn't. Nobody expects this technology to be forced on small clubs who can't afford it. But the reputation of your organisation is at stake when disputed decisions are made by officials at ground-level who may not be in a position to see what happened.

"If the IFAB had approved goal-line technology, what would prevent the approval of technology for other aspects of the game? Every decision in every area of the pitch would soon be questioned.
"No matter which technology is applied, at the end of the day a decision will have to be taken by a human being.
"This being the case, why remove the responsibility from the referee to give it to someone else?"

Because referees don't always see what took place. Stop being an arse, Mr Blatter.

"Fans love to debate any given incident in a game. It is part of the human nature of our sport."

They also love to see match officials having at least a chance of doing their job correctly. I wonder how many referees would not jump at the chance of being able to see an instant replay of things that happened when they blinked, were distracted by something else or were simply in the wrong place to make a reliable decision. Blatter should have been kicked out of FIFA many years ago.

Grrr. ¡Vamos España!