FIFA Ballon D'Or Nominations Prove One Thing: The English Are Not World Class

Dismal as the summer of 2010 was, everyone now seems to have forgotten about the bad times had by England's World Cup players. Although, most people haven't forgiven. The proof of this is seen in the slightly below average attendances at England's last two Euro 2012 qualifiers. People are still down on their luck when it comes to our national squad. Whatever the cause of the problem, it is now clear to most that England are no longer the world power in football that its fans claimed them to be.

There is no bigger example of this than the shortlist for this years FIFA Ballon D'Or nominations, or to the rest of the world, the FIFA player of the year award. The likes of Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerard have been overlooked by the almost giants of Spanish and German football.

Although like most people, I think FIFA have based their decision of the best players solely on World Cup performances alone. For example, Miroslave Klose is one of the nominations for the award and, apart from an amazing World Cup, he did absolutely nothing in terms of league football at the back end of last season. Most others in the nominations are worthy based on their combined performances, such as Lionel Messi, who had an excellent season with Barca last season, but had a slightly underwhelming World Cup.

Bottom line is simple. English players were not good enough to make the list of the years best. Hopefully now, those soles who believe England have the cream of the crop in terms of players may finally realise that we have fallen behind the likes of the world beaters Spain and Holland, and maybe now, its time for a change in guard.

England Are Never Going To Please The Press...Plain And Simple

England's game against Montenegro was nothing new. Many of England's players were lack lustre. Namely, Gareth Barry who was quite horrible. His passing was off, his pace was non-existent, and his vision needed testing. In fact the only decent player on the field aside from Steven Gerrard was Rio Ferdinand, and he has been out with injury for three months. But people have to start looking at England for what they are. Just as the French people have to look at their national team for what they are.

I am not going to point the finger of blame, but everyone has an opinion. And as the age old saying goes, opinions are a lot like penises and vaginas...everyone has one (or both but that is another story for another time). England are a group of players who will always fail in the eyes of the media. Even if they somehow got passed Germany at the World Cup, even if they won the whole thing, the press would still harp on the early performances because criticism sells.

Fabio Capello knew coming into this job that the level of scrutiny from the press was very high, and as we all know, the press' opinion becomes gospel in the minds of those who read their columns in daily newspapers. But after a quick glance at Yahoo News it seems that all the press want to do is pile more misery on an already frustrating situation. Now I know I am regurgitating things that almost everyone says, but seriously, the press is single handedly destroying our national sport with its expectations.

Sure we have some of the best players in the world, but so do Argentina. Now I don't read much Argentinian press but I'm sure once the initial grilling was over, the press stopped harping on it because they, like I'm sure all of us realise, the national team needs to move forward, and nobody when England played their first Euro 2012 qualification game against Bulgaria had forgiven the dismal performance from the World Cup.

Brush it off and get on with it.

Last night was not cataclysmic as the press lead us to believe. Hell, it happens. It happens to the best of teams. Montenegro, for their lowly world ranking are actually a very strong side who play very deep against teams that are better than them. That is what we saw last night. They also had a great goalkeeper.

I also read some comments left by some disgruntled England fans that insinuate that they reason England are not performing is because our manager isn't English. Pardon my French but that is bollocks. During World Cup qualification those are probably the same people who were licking Capello's balls because of the great job he was doing. STOP BLAMING MANAGERS!

I guess what I'm saying is this, the England team are who they are. One day, sometime in the future, when there is less pressure on them as a whole, who knows, it may happen. But we all need to stop believing in the ideal that England are the best team in the world, because, quite frankly, we aren't, and the sooner the press realise that, the less time they can spend blaming the manager, because that is the done thing in football now days. Patience is dead.