Letters to my sons.

Dear Son,

summer is on it’s way and with it the World Cup. Over the weekend Chelsea won the Premiership by beating Manchester United 3-nil but in the process of loosing Wayne Rooney managed to get injured and will, with out doubt, miss the World Cup. He is England’s best player and without him England have little chance of winning the cup, with him they have a very good chance. But it isn’t the player himself who makes the difference, it is the England manager.

The current England manager, Sven, only seems to have a Plan A when it comes to a game or a tournament. He has no Plan B, so when things go wrong he just sits in the dug-out and watches it all go wrong. This happened against Brazil when England went out of the 2002 World Cup. England were 2-1 down but Brazil had a player sent off but failed to take advantage of the extra man – they simply let Brazil get the ball and pass it around.

When Rooney departed the Euro 2004 game against Portugal injured Sven had no plan to shuffle his squad and play a different game to the strengths of the team on the pitch. England eventually lost on penalties. The game against Northern Ireland was also a tactical disaster as a team of lower league journey men turned over highly paid top flight ponces.

My earliest memory of World Cup football was my father cutting a section out of newspaper that had the times of the matches on it and sticking it to the front of the television, something completely out of character for the man. That is when I knew that something special was about to happen.

Luckily you have duel nationality so if Trinidad do well you can bask in the reflected glory in a few years time.