Watching England is now more like going to the panto

13 April 2012

Who are they? Who are the thousands who masquerade as supporters of England's national football team only to deliberately undermine one of their players just when he needs their support most?

Who are the people who think that just because they have paid to watch England, then it's fair game, because of one mistake, to rain abuse on a bloke who has provided seven years and 68 internationals of largely sterling service for their team? Who are they that can be so pathetically short-sighted or care so little as to believe that this baiting could in any way help England reach the World Cup finals?

You could see Fabio Capello asking himself these questions at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night. Genuinely baffled and perplexed about the treatment of Ashley Cole, he could only shrug: "I don't understand . . . I don't know . . . they pay for tickets, they have to decide what they can do. I hope that they help us a lot more."

It was said more in hope than expectation because this is Wembley Stadium 2008 we're talking about. The weather may be a lot colder in Minsk on Wednesday but even Cole can never have believed he would be more likely to feel warmer and more fairly received in the Belarussian capital than in his own national stadium.

It may not have been a day for rapture with England offering glimpses of alarming defensive vulnerability and suffering a familar struggle in breaking down inferior opposition until Kazakhstan's lack of conditioning saw them collapse and concede thrice to Wayne Rooney's double and Jermain Defoe in the last 15 minutes. Yet any day when you win 5-1, even given the poverty of so much of England's display, is hardly a day for vitriol.

Those jeering Wembley patrons will protest that it was not because Cole had a suicidally casual crossfield ball intercepted, which briefly put Kazakhstan back in the match at just 2-1 down, that they decided to turn on him but because the Chelsea full-back supposedly symbolises so much that's wrong with the modern game.

Well, perhaps they do as well. Er, whoever they are. Gooners pursuing an old grudge? The ABC club Anybody But Chelsea? Punters with low boredom thresholds joining in a bit of blood sport to make their own entertainment during a fairly dire match?

Nice to see in this absurd world of good celebrity/bad celebrity that they still gave David Beckham's late sub's appearance the single biggest cheer of the day. It's like going to the panto now, not a football match.

Amid it all, Capello must have learned some valuable lessons for Minsk, where Belarus, he warned us, would be vastly more "dangerous" than the lively Kazak youngsters and, even without their ex-Gunner Alex Hleb fit to play, would zip the ball around with neat passing interchanges "like Arsenal".

So no more experimenting. One half of 4-3-3 and of Rooney looking lost and isolated on the left and two halves of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard still doing their odd couple impression can only have convinced Capello that it must be 4-4-2, it must be Rooney in the central striking role and it must be Gareth Barry holding with either Lampard or Gerrard as the central midfield pivot.

If Capello is going to drop either on the strength of current form, it surely has to be Gerrard. Yet he understandably remains such an admirer of the Liverpool man that one suspects he will be loathe to leave his match-winning potential on the bench, so may ask him to once again abandon his favoured central pastures for the left flank.

A fourth successive win would mark the best start to any England World Cup qualifying campaign, putting the finals in South Africa tantalisingly within reach.

Yet if his team can deliver a nap hand at home and still find one of their number being ripped apart, Capello must still be concerned whether he can rely on this Wembley crowd as being anything but fairweather allies in the push for 2010. He'd be forgiven for already yearning for games to be shared between venues around the country as they are in his native Italy.

Indeed, I can't recall anything like this happening at any time in the inter-Wembley period, even taking into account the tribal rivalries involving Man United's players at Anfield and Liverpool's at Old Trafford.

Capello may rightfully wonder if what befell Cole could afflict any more of his players in the future. What, say, if Emile Heskey's misfiring in front of goal culminated in the sort of nightmare miss which Scotland's Chris Iwelumo had suffered at Hampden Park against Norway on Saturday? What guarantee would there have been that Heskey wouldn't have suffered the same treatment as Cole?

So what happened to Iwelumo? "I couldn't believe the positive reaction from the fans," mused the Wolves man, so grateful to the supportive Tartan Army. "That Ashley Cole situation is one that I can't really comprehend. England fans doing that, it makes no sense to me."

Nor to anyone who is a true supporter of England.

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Fabio Capello

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Watching England is now more like going to the panto

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