Brian Glanville

The maestro has spoken. So let there be no more dispute about it, no more limp special pleading from their manager.

No, it hasn’t really been much of a World Cup, but what’s new? Go all the way back to 1966 of blessed memory and what do you find; even in an era when there were only, blessedly, 16 teams involved rather than the present gargantuan 32?

Grin and bear it. We are stuck with Fabio Capello for another two potentially sterile years. The Football Association, led, if that be the word, by that perpetual holder of offices he hardly adorns, Sir Dave Richards (remember him as the ineffectual chairman of his home club, Sheffield Wednesday?) found himself and the FA over a barrel.

“History repeats itself,” wrote Karl Marx, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” A dictum which comes into my mind reflecting on the terminal damage done by the Dazzling young Turkish-German Mesut Ozil in England in that 4-1 debacle.

England’s pitiful debacle against Germany may have been some kind of consolation to the Italians and the French who didn’t even get as far as the first eliminating round.

Perhaps we should have known. Perhaps – though the result was hardly forgotten – we should have paid more attention to the fact that Spain, for all their array of stars, a year ago had lost astonishingly to the modest USA team 2-0 in the Confederations Cup and thus been eliminated from the tournament.