The 3 players who DON’T deserve their place in Capello’s squad
Whilst Fabio Capello has picked a lot of good players for his England squad for the World Cup, there are some players who shouldn’t be on the plane to South Africa. Here is a run down of the top three in order of who is the least deserving:
3: Shaun Wright-Phillips
The Manchester City winger lost his place to Adam Johnson towards the end of the season as his form was so good. Wright-Phillips career hasn’t really taken off as he intended, after showing a lot of promise and earning a big money move to Chelsea he found himself back at his first club. He hasn’t progressed any further and whilst he has been reasonable for City this season hasn’t really warranted going to the World Cup. However neither has Theo Walcott based on this season’s form and Adam Johnson has only had half a season in the Premiership, so really it was down to Capello to decide who he thought would contribute the most to England.
Wright-Phillips is England’s most experienced right-winger so that could be why Capello has chosen him ahead of those two. But Walcott does potentially have more ability than Wright-Phillips based on his age and has also done more for England than him, although that is mainly based on that performance against Croatia. Capello couldn’t really have gone too wrong in picking either Wright-Phillips or Walcott as neither had an outstanding season for their club and most importantly whoever went was always going to be an understudy to Aaron Lennon anyway.
2. Michael Carrick
Carrick has had a very poor season for Manchester United and definitely should not be going to the World Cup in place of either Tom Huddlestone or Scott Parker. He seems to have a lost a lot of confidence in his own ability and his performances have shown this. This season he has been guilty of giving the ball away far too often in matches and hasn’t shown much of the passing ability he has, which at times can be world class.
One also has to ask what does Carrick bring to the England team? If England need to protect a lead then he can be thrown on to sure-up the midfield, but given his displays this season it wouldn’t fill you with the best of confidence giving him such a key role of ensuring that England don’t concede. He is a very one-dimensional player as he often will just play the ball sideways and then every now and then try a long-field pass which if it comes off can be effective but if not then it’s a waste of possession. Giving Carrick’s place to Scott Parker would have been much more of a useful decision as Parker can not only be used in a defensive role to protect a lead, but can also offer some drive to the midfield if England are in need of a goal. His performances for West Ham this season have been outstanding and there have been times where he has carried his team, it’s not surprising that he is the first player since Julian Dicks to have won Hammer of the year, two years running.
Parker could have been a great player for England to have on the bench in South Africa and it’s a shame that his place has been taken by Michael Carrick, who could potentially be an accident waiting to happen for England.
1. Emile Heskey
Scoring three goals in the Premiership and that being deemed good enough to go to the World Cup is laughable. Heskey should be nowhere near the squad, even if he volunteered to be the team’s bootboy. When you’ve got Darren Bent scoring 24 goals in an unfashionable Sunderland team and he’s left at home for a striker that manages three goals then something is seriously wrong. All this talk of Heskey’s link-up play is a nonsense as well, firstly it isn’t that great and a lot of it seems to stem from the fact that he will do one good pass or bit of movement that England will score from and it will be highlighted. But for every thing he does that leads to a goal there are several things that he does wrong that doesn’t lead to anything. Secondly for link-up player we already have Peter Crouch in the team, so unless he gets a bad injury Heskey’s presence isn’t even needed.
A lot of people are saying Heskey should be included because a statistic reads: Wayne Rooney has scored 10 England goals with Heskey in the team and two goals without him. But do people really think a player the calibre of Wayne Rooney really relies on Heskey to score goals for England? It is an interesting statistic no less but all of those goals won’t be all entirely Heskey’s making and he gets far too much credit for what he actually offers the team. The Aston Villa striker’s inclusion has been a total waste of a call-up and even Bobby Zamora had he not had injury problems should be going ahead of him. But the real victim in this is definitely Darren Bent who could simply have not done any more to persuade Fabio Capello to take him to South Africa.
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