Capello and numbers

England were utterly destroyed, and personally im least surprised. although i was impressed by their qualifying campaign, which was nowhere like the disastrous one for Euro 08, England never looked like it was in South Africa to win. they were ridiculous in the warmup friendlies, played almost amateur football against Algeria, and rarely communicated to the world they had a teamsheet boasting Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, John Terry, Ashley Cole and Glen Johnson.

quoting an AFP story:

"Germany's pace, fitness and energy levels were key to their last-16 victory in Bloemfontein, with manager Joachim Loew speculating later that younger players were better able to recover from a long season.

Now England must search out new, young, talent...

The view in the camp is that only a handful of [U-21] players are anywhere near ready for promotion and England's best hopes lie in the under-17 squad which recently beat Spain in the European Championships but are years away from selection for the senior squad.

Quite what Capello can do until those players miraculously arrive is hard to fathom."

in that same story, this was what Fabio Capello claimed:

"The big problem for us is only 38 percent of players in the Premier League are English. In other countries it is 68, 69 or 70 per cent.

Clubs do produce young players. But some are Welsh, some are Irish, some are the others. They are not English but they play in the Premier League.

It can happen suddenly, though. When I was director of the academy at Milan we produced seven players who played for AC Milan. Now, no-one. It is the same for Manchester United. You have to be lucky sometimes. At some moments players come, at others nothing.

Against us Germany played four foreign players. Double passports. And they did not produce good players for a long time.

We hope to find the same in England. But you have to understand in Germany there are 80 million people."

that was terrible judgment, Signore Capello. maybe it was your PR manager, i dont know. you see, Euro champs Spain has about the same population as England, albeit less. semi-finalists Holland, which have won its last 13 competitive matches, only has 16 million. the other semi-finalists Uruguay has a mere 3.5 million, while the minnows you beat 1-0 seems like a kampong at just 2 million.