What can you do when there’s nothing to be done?

England were rubbish against Egypt, Mexico and Japan, they were rubbish against USA, Algeria and Slovenia, and they were rubbish against Germany. So what is to be done?

Some people maintain that the appalling refereeing cost England the Germany game – that is patently not true, because England only played a bit of football for three minutes before the interval (while Germany were having a little rest in a game they were obviously controlling) and they did have fifty minutes to render the referee’s mistake irrelevant. In the end it was Germany who did that.

Others have mentioned that “Gerrard was ineffective on the wing” – he spent all game choosing to shoot badly from distance with three men in front of him in the box, which has nothing to do with playing out of position and more to do with being a bad footballer. And since when has Gerrard been England’s star player, capable of saving a whole game?

A lot of fans – and so-called experts – are expressing surprise that such “world class” players could have played such an awful game today. First of all, that was not the first awful game from an England team, and especially not from this England team. Secondly, who is “world class”? Milner, Barry, Upson, Wright-Phillips, Johnson and Heskey have never demonstrated anything which suggests they could be good enough to play in the quarter-finals of a world cup (which is why they didn't get there).

Johnson, Terry and Upson were pathetic in the first goal, Johnson was wholly to blame with two awful mistakes in the second and Barry was fleeced in the fourth. Upson’s goal hardly saves him from criticism – he jumped with his eyes closed and the ball hit him, as opposed to the other way round. Even then it took some awful goalkeeping before the ball went in.

There are some players on the team who play reasonably good football, among them Frank Lampard. However, he is the player who took most shots on goal in the whole of the 2006 tournament and didn’t score any goals. He did something similar this time, missing every shot he took, but today he did something even worse – the enduring image of Germany’s third goal is that of Lampard with his arms in the air as a German player scampers past him with the ball, followed by Lampard hanging around on the edge of the England area and totally ignoring Muller in what is generally known as acres of space.

Of course if you put rubbish players on the pitch, you get rubbish football. But this is only half the story. This is what needs doing:

• English xenophobia and arrogance, which is typical among fans, must be eradicated from football – this is the first and most important point and is the one where everyone will stop reading. That just proves the point.
• The media, from the joke that is the BBC to the shower that is ITV, from the unintelligent clichés and sycophancy of Lineker, Hansen and Shearer to the illiterate newspaper hacks, must be silenced as soon as they start hyping each new incarnation of England as anything remotely resembling a first class football team. England are quarter-final material at best.
• The fans have to accept that the English are no good at football. Anyone still reading this is bound to protest here – ok, so what have we won? One dodgy world cup and no Euros. End of. Just because every bar-propping pundit from London to Shanghai licks the Premier League’s arse does not make English football any better.
• Then and only then can we start talking about technique and youth development and everything else. We need to sort the first points out first in order to teach our children these things. Technique is nothing with the wrong attitude.

Of course all this is irrelevant, because nothing is going to be done. And the same thing will happen next time. And the time after that. And all the pundits will be so surprised. And anyone with a modicum of common sense will see stupid Johnny English approach another tournament with his army of obese, beer-swilling, hooligan fans and his illiterate journalists and his idiot sports minister and all their predictions and clean up at the bookies.