Blog: Why did England fail?

All English Champions League final, arguably the best domestic top flight division in the world, world class players, and yet we still failed to qualify for this summers competition, why? asks blogger Jarrod Hill.

Well the FA firmly placed the blame at the door of Steve Maclaren and has since been replaced by Fabio Capello.

The so-called experts are split over whether as a nation we have the players that are good enough, but seriously are you telling me we have not got enough quality to have at least qualified?

I am not talking about winning it, I am talking about qualifying for a competition that Turkey, Greece, and Romania all managed to book their places in.

I keep hearing pundits explaining that England players lack the technical ability to play in Europe and that they lack the tactical intellect to cope with teams such as Italy and France. Well I am sorry but these pundits must have egg on their faces, we are going to witness an all English Champions League final. A final I might add that will be contested by players such as Ferdinand, Rooney, Brown, Carrick, Hargreaves, Lampard, Terry, A Cole, J Cole, Bridge and Wright-Phillips, yes 11 England Internationals.

So what happens, they pull on an England shirt and they lose their ability to perform?

Steve Maclaren intimated a number of reasons for failing, one was the number of games a successful England club and international player has to play across the course of a season, and I can understand his point (to a degree). If we take Steven Gerrard as an example, this season he will have played 50+ games, but surely this is a problem for most international players and is not a problem exclusive to English players.

Another excuse trotted out on a regular basis is the fact none of our Internationals play abroad, well Italy won the World Cup with a squad entirely based within Italian football, and like I have already pointed out most England players play in Europe with their club teams.

I feel like I am rambling on a bit here with no answers to give you, but I cannot hide my disappointment at not being able to look forward to watching England competing at Euro 2008.

My only option is to join the FA and place the blame at Maclarens door, or should we also hold the FA responsible for appointing him in the first place?

Let's face it, was his CV that impressive? Whoooooooo weeee he won the League Cup, and, oh yes nothing else apart from being Ferguson's right hand man.

The FA have made error after error in relation to their most important appointment, from the time of Brian Clough through to recently not snaring Jose Mourinho, they seem to be more interested in a face for the media than an actually hiring someone who could be successful. Even that back fired when Sven and his private life threatened to over shadow anything football related.

So I have come to the conclusion that the English FA need to look within and possibly change their out dated views on many things related to both our domestic game and National set up, or are they just puppets dancing to the Premiership/Sky tune??

There is an argument to be had whether the FA actually runs the game in this country anymore, Premiership/Sky, decide fixtures, dates, kick-off times, and obviously provide the funds that make our top tier football the envy of the world.

But is this to the detriment of our national side?

I told you I had more questions than answers; please help me make sense of it all.