A Season to Savour and Forget
Sean O'Conor
With Roy Hodgson's team drawing 2-2 with Brazil in Rio and May turning into June, a varied and colourful season in England is finally over.
It was a landmark. 150 years ago England gave birth to organised football in the form of the Football Association. But a century and a half since that meeting in the Freemasons Tavern, the champagne tastes a little flat as golden memories are tempered by missed opportunities, particularly in the pre-war era when England had the chance to shape world soccer but passed on it.
Looking ahead to World Cups in Brazil, Russia and Qatar, the game's homeland now wonders when it will host the sport's major tournament again. England's last two bids to host the World Cup have ended in embarrassing black-balling, and since Stanley Rous stepped aside for Joao Havelange in 1974, England has been marginalised to the point where it wields no meaningful influence beyond a seat on the IFAB body which oversees rule changes. The Premier League might be the richest in the world, but is treated as a brand competing with international football.
2013 also saw the 20th anniversary of the Premier League, an extraordinary creation born under the auspices of the F.A., but in its extreme commercialism a world away from the body's amateur origins.
The Premier League is a magnet to big money and bigger egos and a galaxy of stars has braved England's damp and chilly climate in search of riches. The payday shows no signs of abating in the light of yet another bumper TV deal, worth £5.5 billion over three seasons, 70% more than the previous settlement.
And so the financial colossus of what Americans refer to as the 'EPL' marches on. In 2011-2012, England's top flight generated £2.36 billion, comfortably ahead of the Bundesliga (£1.5 billion), La Liga (£1.4 billion) and Serie A (£1.3 billion). The global reach of the English language gives the league the edge when marketing to Africa, Asia and North America, although the lukewarm performance of its teams in Europe this season gave the marketing men concern.
Meanwhile, ticket prices remain exorbitant in a country aching from austerity and a flat-lining economy. As with Spain, England shows a football face at odds with a struggling nation.
Unlike Spain however, England's national team continues to suffer from the influx of foreign talent, which accounted for 64% of the players and 78% of the managers in the Premier League last season. Arthur Pember, the first president of the F.A. in 1863, would surely have been confounded by his successor David Bernstein's plea for more English players in 2013.
The Premier League was more interesting again for its relegation fight than its title race, where the Manchester clubs swapped their 2012 positions to hand Alex Ferguson the title in his swansong season. Fergie has certainly made his successor's job an impossible one, although one wonders if his authoritarian style, forged in the same Glaswegian trade union tradition which schooled Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Jock Stein, could ever be repeated.
Picking as his replacement another grassroots Scot, David Moyes, is clearly an attempt to prolong the Fergie magic at Old Trafford, but the ex-Everton boss will surely take a less abrasive approach to the media and his team. As far as we know he has not been known to spy on his players' private lives.
Ferguson's dictatorial rule was once the norm before managers became coaches and this zero tolerance became increasingly admired as player salaries have ballooned to almost immoral levels. Journalists to whom Fergie extended his famous hairdryer treatment beg to differ. Two European Cups and one Cup Winners' Cup seems a meagre return however for so many seasons at the helm of a major club. Fergie fell out with many top players and made some atrocious signings, but no-one can begrudge him his seat among the greats for having survived at the top for the best part of thirty years.
Both domestic cups were bagged by minnows - Swansea won the League Cup against third-tier Bradford City with some delightful football, although it can only be a matter of time before Michael Laudrup is lured to a bigger club, possibly his former employers Real Madrid.
Wigan took the F.A. Cup with a dramatic last-gasp goal against Manchester City but the Latics then etched an unwanted place in English football history by getting relegated in the same season.
Roberto Martinez, who had laid the foundations at Swansea, worked wonders with limited resources at Wigan and will now pick up Moyes' baton at Everton. Andre Villas-Boas has put his Chelsea nightmare in the past and has started to make waves at Tottenham, although Spurs missed out on the Champions League at the final hurdle. Arsene Wenger's trophy-less run extended to eight seasons with the Gunners holding on the top three's coat-tails, unable to compete for the title or Champions League without their confused ownership being resolved.
Brendan Rogers, another Swansea graduate, remains a clearly talented young manager but will have to improve on Liverpool's eighth and seventh place finishes under his tenure.
Stoke, whose physical but fair approach helped them unsettle many a superior team, ended the season by sacking Tony Pulis, the main reason for their longevity in the top flight.
Hacks are cock-a-hoop that Jose Mourinho is returning to the Premier League, but another of their favourites Harry Redknapp failed to work his magic at QPR, who finished bottom.
'English' clubs had a disappointing season in the Champions League. Domestic champions Manchester City exited stage left after finishing bottom of their four-team group, while holders Chelsea missed the knock-out stage by the thinnest of margins following away losses to Juventus and Shakhtar Donetsk.
Arsenal and Manchester United both fell at the last 16 hurdle to mean no English teams in the quarter-finals. United lost by the odd goal to Real Madrid over two legs and Arsenal were eliminated by Bayern Munich on away goals, but at least could boast of having beaten the eventual winners 2-0 in Bavaria.
England provided the stadium for the Champions League final, but locals could only peer through the gaps as two German teams battled it out at Wembley. Thanks to two world wars and repeated humiliations by the Mannschaft, England sees Germany as its bête noire, even though the feeling is not reciprocated. But in 2012-'13, every little Englander was doffing his cap to the füssball across the Channel. Not only did Germany's club sides show everyone how to play, the culture of affordable tickets, supporter-owned clubs and safe standing was universally noted and envied.
The Europa League provided richer pickings with three English teams making the last eight. Chelsea eventually lifted the cup with a 2-1 win over Benfica after their £50m man Fernando Torres scored a world-class opener. Swansea, Tottenham and Wigan enter the competition next season, alongside whichever teams drop out of the Champions League early, as Chelsea did this season.
Whither the Three Lions?
The national team stuttered along as usual in 2012-2013, scraping a draw at home to Ukraine and throwing away leads to Poland and Montenegro in one of UEFA's easier qualifying groups for Brazil 2014.
England sit second in Group H and with three home games out of four to come, should still reach the World Cup finals, but they must avoid defeat in Kiev on the 10th of September against their closest rivals.
The traditionally stratospheric expectations on the national team have not been in evidence so far during Hodgson's reign, and despite the encouraging 2-2 draw in the Maracana, only a fool would expect the Three Lions to go to the World Cup with any realistic hope of winning it.
The Under-21 side qualified with ease for the UEFA 2013 finals in Israel but two straight losses to Italy and Norway meant they were home before the postcards and the knives are out once more for manager Stuart Pearce. Despite six years at the helm, the former England defender and assistant manager seems unable to inject attacking flair into his sides. And perhaps he has never been forgiven by the public for omitting David Beckham from the 2012 Great Britain Olympic squad and serving up a functional but creativity-free team.
Former England boss Glenn Hoddle, who now runs a soccer academy in Spain, has been part of a growing chorus bemoaning the nation's inability to coach flowing football. Gary Lineker recently tweeted that England had gone back to "the dark ages" for playing a rigid 4-4-2. In a year in which Germany has shown the fruits of a nationwide restructuring of youth policy, the F.A. have nowhere to hide.
One bright note was the long-awaited opening of a national training centre, St George's Park in Staffordshire.
Promises are vague, but with the long-term goal of making the national team a challenger again, it will be interesting to see which playing style is to be taught across the age groups as the English way.
© Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile.com
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