BLOG: England: Overrated, badly coached and going home.

After witnessing England go out of previous major tournaments largely thanks to a handball, penalty shoot-outs, a goal not being given that should have been and through being downright awful, I had a horrible hunch that this year’s punchline was being prepared for delivery and so it proved.

First things first, credit must of course go to the winners. If you were given a pound by every person living in Iceland you still wouldn’t have as much in your bank as most of the England squad earn in a month, yet they won every key battle and fully deserve their place in the quarter-finals.

They had the passion, desire and successful game plan that England lacked. They had players willing to put their bodies on the line and who were intent on creating their own hype rather than being absorbed in the misguided enthusiasm and belief that follows the England players around like a bad smell.

Plus they had a coaching team who had identified England’s threats and weaknesses and dealt with them admirably. Heck, they might even beat France.

Roy Hodgson is an intelligent and experienced football man, yet his inability to see the obvious was astounding.

Your average man on the street could see that Wayne Rooney was trying too hard to be the world class central midfielder he isn’t; your average man on the street could see that Harry Kane shouldn’t have been taking free-kicks and corners; your average man on the street could see that my nan would have been better off playing out on the right than Daniel Sturridge and she’s been dead for ten years.

Instead, England were still congratulating themselves on taking an early lead when Ragnar Sigurdsson wandered in unnoticed to level the scores, and when Kolbeinn Sigthorsson exposed Joe Hart’s left hand as being nothing more than a lettuce leaf the whole thing started to go horribly wrong and the rest of the game left us bewildered.

When Hodgson then sacrificed what in monetary terms was more than your average man on the street earns in a year by resigning three days before his contract was up, the gulf between common sense and fantasy football had never seemed bigger.