Trevor, how could you?

Former England international Trevor Brooking has recently come out with a statement which is nonsensical.

Trevor Brooking has long been one of my favourite people in football. Away back in 1982, I still feel that had he been fit, England might have reached at least, in Spain, the World Cup semifinal. But injury kept this fine playmaker and occasional scorer of spectacular goals out of the team, coming on only as a significant substitute in what proved the last game, in Madrid, against Spain. The trouble being that a clearly unfit Kevin Keegan had talked his way into the team as well and blatantly missed an easy headed chance to win the decisive game.

I’d have been perfectly happy to see Trevor as the England national team manager. When for brief while he did take over his one and only club West Ham United, it was with distinct success. Now he is a grand panjandrum of coaching within the Football Association with one or two debatable ideas it is true: notably his belief that coaching of young footballers should start at the age of five; something which fills me with horror. Surely young boys should simply be allowed, in infinity of ways, simply to play and to enjoy themselves. Quite apart from the fact that at almost every level, especially the junior ones, gifted, competent coaches are in sadly short supply.

Now Trevor has come out with a statement which, with the greatest possible respect, I find nonsensical. “I thought,” he tells us, “there was a lot of quality football in Euro 2008 and the fact we didn’t qualify was almost a reality check. We didn’t want to go from that to saying we need to be in the last four of the World Cup.”

Why ever should we? But this is a statement which begs so many questions that it is hard to know where to start exposing its sheer fallacies. Let it first be said that the infinite harm of international football is that it is full of the most extraordinary surprises. Examples of which I intend to give; and there are so many of them.

Secondly, with any kind of competent manager, rather than the ludicrously inept Steve McClaren — inexplicably used as a radio commentator by the BBC during the recent Euros — England’s team would certainly have been among the finalists though how they would then have fared, especially with McClaren still in charge, is another matter.

Look if you can bear to at the way McClaren threw away the crucial match against Croatia in Zagreb with his daffy 3-5-2 tactics, wholly alien to a team which just wasn’t used to them. Look how long it took him to grasp the fact that in central midfield, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard simply cancelled each other out. Or the way he stuck to a dud goalkeeper like Paul Robinson, perhaps a touch unlucky to give away that crazy goal in Croatia when he miskicked a back pass, but still there to make errors in Moscow in the return game against Russia.

To give England and even McClaren their due, however, injuries forced him to make significant and profitable changes when Russia came to Wembley where they were well beaten. But when Croatia came there for the last game when England needed only a draw, he fielded an inexperienced ’keeper in Scott Carson who gave away a pitiful early goal and under pouring rain, Croatia went on to win a game which should have been put out of their reach.

Yet look, for example, at the eventual European champions, Spain, who have even to their eternal shame lost to little Northern Ireland 3-2 in the European qualifying competition. Who then would have given them a chance of eventually taking the title? A cataclysmic defeat but the Spaniards rose from the ashes. As for the Russians, they may have cut a fine figure in a couple of their Euro final games against Sweden and Holland, but in the qualifiers, they not only lost to England but almost incredibly also lost in Israel which should have given England their entry to the eventual finals. And playing away to Andorra, the minnows of the group, the Russians could squeeze through only 1-0.

While we are still talking about the Euro finals, who would have put any money on a heavily depleted Turkish team giving disappointing Germany such a fright in the semifinals having previously accounted for Croatia on penalties? The fact is that you just never, at the highest level of international soccer, tell.

England’s new manager is Fabio Capello, whom I had known, liked and admired for years, both as player and manager though he deeply disappointed me with the wretched start he made, a sad case of what you might call Beckhamitis, insisting on deploying the faded, jaded Beckham even in preference to a right winger in such excellent form as Blackburn’s David Bentley. It may even be that England, in the coming World Cup, will again fail to qualify; who can say? But to suggest that the semifinals would be an impossibility, is ludicrous. They will still be able to call on the likes of John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney — surely due soon to recover full form — Gareth Barry and Bentley himself. Quite enough talent surely to compose a highly competitive team.

Just to show how unconvincing Brook’s attitude is, let him and us look back to the finals of the European Cup in 2004. Who won it? Not Italy, not Germany, not Portugal the hosts but utterly unfancied Greece: who beat their hosts not once but twice. Initially the most distant of outsiders, without a star name in the team; indeed, with at least two players who were reserves in their European clubs. But so shrewdly guided by the veteran German coach, Otto Rehhagel, they went on to win the competition.

And who won in Sweden in 1992? Why, Denmark, whose players almost literally came off the holiday beaches at the last moment when Yugoslavia embroiled in civil war were kicked out of the competition. After an uneasy start, the Danes proceeded to scintillate Peter Schmeichel defiant in goal, Brian Laudrup, whose more famous brother Michael refused to take part, exuberant in midfield. Even the Germans, though they surely put it about, finally could not compete with them.

In the latest Euros, France, mismanaged by Raymond Domenech, who, against all the odds, has kept his positions fell at the first fence. Italy went further, but never remotely looked as if they would be contenders. Even the Dutch after early brilliance succumbed in the end to the Russians. Brooking, take heart!