Today Fabio Capello announces his final 23 players to take to South Africa, a major moment in his career as England manager, but compared with the decision on his starting XI formation in the World Cup this will seem like childsplay.
The toughest decision Capello will have to make will be his formation for the opening game against the USA. The Italian went for 4-4-2 for the bulk of the qualifying campaign, but he has shown recently that he is not entirely happy with the system, and it is easy to see why.
Playing 4-4-2 means England must play a second striker alongside Wayne Rooney, and then decide whether to a) push Gerrard out onto the left to accommodate Barry and Lampard in the centre, meaning Milner will miss out, or b) drop either Gerrard or Lampard to play Barry and Milner, or c) drop Barry and play Gerrard and Lampard together in the centre.
All three scenarios have their problems; playing Gerrard on the left risks marginalising one of England’s best players and playing him out of position. Dropping one of either Lampard or Gerrard is faintly ridiculous as Capello would have to not play one of his best eleven players in order to keep to a system, and dropping Barry to play them both is a risk. It leaves England with no screen, and either they both play attacking and leave England a bit exposed, or one has to curb their natural creative tendency to protect the back-four (and that’s before we discuss whether Lampard and Gerrard can even play together).
All this discussion is redundant if you then think that we have to play someone alongside Rooney, who will either be Emile Heskey or Peter Crouch, neither of whom are particularly inspiring.
I don’t mean to be harsh but if England are serious about winning the World Cup we have to look at rival teams like Spain, who will be able to play David Villa alongside Fernando Torres, and neither of our aforementioned second strikers are quite the standard of the €40 million Barcelona new-boy. The fact of the matter is England should only play with two strikers if they are going to score goals. Heskey does not score goals, and although Crouch has an impressive record most of his goals are against lesser teams.
The potential solution to this is to move away from 4-4-2 and play 4-5-1, thereby allowing Capello to play all three of Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the centre of midfield, and play two out-and-out wide players in their right position, and it allows Gerrard and Lampard to go forward and do what they do best.
This all seems too good to be true, and it is, because the fatal flaw with 4-5-1 is that it relies on Wayne Rooney playing up front by himself. When there is already so much pressure on him to perform for England, making him the only forward is a risky move. Rooney is not a natural target man, he likes to drop deep, to pull wide, and this will require Gerrard, Milner or Lennon to be England’s furthest forward player at different times, which is not perfect. At least playing a second striker would allow Rooney to play off someone, and would always leave England a target if he moves out of position.
Essentially, 4-5-1 allows England to play their best XI players, but there is still a big question mark over whether it will work in practice. In the second half against Japan Capello tried playing Joe Cole just behind Wayne Rooney, which is an understandable ploy, and is probably the best use of the out-of-contract Chelsea man, but it cannot be a starting formation. And as for the talk of playing three centre-backs and wing-backs, I cannot see the merits of that whatsoever, its reminiscent of Mike Bassett’s breakdown in his own, fictional World Cup preparations.
Capello has a Sophie’s Choice-style dilemma (not to seem melodramatic or anything) between playing a formation that works in 4-4-2, but means he has to make difficult selections in midfield and play a striker who is not one of the best XI English players, or play 4-5-1, thereby getting all of England’s best XI onto the pitch at the same time, but risking playing a formation that puts too much pressure on Rooney and may blunt the attacking prowess the system is supposed to foster.
But hey, Fabio Capello is a clever man, these are the decisions a man of his stature was brought to the helm to make, so let’s hope he can make it work, he has an unenviable balancing act to perform.
Does the 4-5-1 really amount to putting too much pressure on Rooney? He performed best for Man Utd this season when he was up front on his own with Nani and Valencia on either side. Surely it makes most sense to play Milner and Lennon either side for England, with Lampard or Gerrard pushing forward from midfield to support Rooney (as Cole did against Japan)
I’m not saying the 4-5-1 is doomed to failure but I’m saying its not perfect, and it would be easier to play that system with a natural target-man centre forward such as Fernando Torres, rather than Wayne Rooney, who quite clearly a second-striker, not the target. I take your point he has played that role for United this season but that was not a perfect situation either, and I just get the feeling that England don’t have the players for a specific system or a system that is completely suited to their best XI players.