The Zaza Shuffle

I didn’t watch the whole Germany v Italy game and according to my less than complimentary Twitter timeline, it sounds like I dodged a bullet. Heavyweight clashes can often be a bit like this. Teams are too well set up and know too much about their opponents and they cancel each other out. Commentators will compare what we’re watching to a game of chess and I often think to myself that I wouldn’t spend two hours watching a game of chess.
I watched the highlights when I got home and I was a bit gutted for the Italians, particularly Gianluigi Buffon who is one of the coolest people on the planet and made an absolutely fantastic save. As for the penalties, I know people said it was the worst shoot out ever but try and remember that the goalkeepers were Buffon and Manuel Neuer, probably the best two keepers in the world. Germany scored six out of nine, Italy five. Try and imagine how many England would’ve scored.
Zaza’s run up caused much hilarity and rightly so. As my fourteen year old said “if you’re going to do a run up like that, you absolutely HAVE to score”. It was without doubt the silliest run up I’ve ever seen but if he’d have scored, no-one would’ve cared.
In other news, reports have emerged from the England camp about differences in opinion between Roy Hodgson and his coaches particularly Gary Neville. It’s impossible to know if there’s any truth behind any of these reports. But we all watched England play and no-one could deny that this was a team without a clear sense of who they were or what their style of football was. And getting mixed messages from the manager and the coaching staff would certainly not help.
On top of that, the report said that the Football Association was so concerned about high jinks at the team’s base in Chantilly, the £500-a-night Auberge du Jeu de Paume was told to remove its chandeliers before the players arrived or risk them being smashed. The hotel reopened this weekend and staff have revealed they took down their most expensive glass fittings because the FA was worried they might be damaged.
While I’m appalled by this story, I’m not really surprised. So there you have it. England failed because we had 1) management who couldn’t agree tactics and offered no clear direction and 2) players, some of whom are basically morons, who didn’t know what they were meant to do. No wonder we were so shit.