This week in football ....

Almost one week later and still the recrimination and regret rage on. England will be staying home while the 16 other European nations battle it out at the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland next summer.

Abysmally and toothlessly, England lost the must-draw match against Croatia. The same match that I had expected to lack zing because England needed only a draw and Croatia had already qualified. I had not reckoned on the idiocy of the English fans that booed the Croatia national anthem and verily lit a fire under the Croatian players. SCS received his marching orders barely twelve hours after the match. Both Ferguson and Wenger had labeled the decision as "hasty" but it would seem the FA had little choice if it was to maintain any creditability at all with the public. The search for a replacement has taken on a circus-like quality, with every out-of-work (or soon to be out-of-work) manager having his name thrown into the ring. Several of the gainfully employed are also in the mix, willingly or otherwise. Most amusing of all has been the parade of managers that have graciously withdrawn their names from consideration. I don't think anybody wants this job!

And frankly, despite the 2.5 million pounds salary, who would really want to be England manager? Whenever something goes wrong, the manager is almost the first to have the finger pointed in his direction. I usually have no time for McLaren or his bland platitudes, but I felt some real sympathy for him during his farewell press conference. He had always tried hard, too hard, to appear impervious to the pressures of the job. At the end, when he allowed the cracks to show, it was clear that the pressure had been too much for him, and had been too much for longer than he cared to admit.

In the wake of the non-qualification mishap, there has been the miles of analysis on what went wrong, who to blame and how to fix it. Was it all McLaren's fault? Would things have been different with a different coach? Would firing him and getting the right man in fix this malaise in the England national team? Or do the problems go deeper than that? Is there a systemic failure that starts from the very grass-roots of soccer development? In which case, maybe SCS was just the unlucky SOB that got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I reckon it's probably contextual. If Croatia had not scored that last goal (for instance, had Petric struck the ball just a fraction earlier or later), the attention would be focused on Beckham's heroics. It would not have masked England's poor performance (even a victory would not be enough to divert attention from how badly the team played), but perhaps the autopsy might have been staved off for another few months. They were playing atrociously and were so obviously outclassed by the Croatians in terms of ability and tactics, but somehow managed to score two goals and to only lose by one. It is not inconceivable that they could have pulled off the draw and qualified, even though they did not deserve to. And how different might the reactions be had they managed it?

So, was it all McLaren's fault that England stays home next year? I think the FA was right to fire him, if only because he should never have been given the job in the first place. But it wasn't all his fault. If anything, the English FA is probably more culpable than McLaren, for putting someone so blatantly unsuited into the position, and expecting him to be what he cannot be. I personally think that England was unfortunate to be missing Rooney, Owen et al., and especially Terry and Ferdinand in defence. England's players are not so poor that the first choice team would not be regarded as among the top 16 in Europe.

Whether English players are good enough for an England team to win a major tournament? That's another kettle of fish altogether. McLaren's England was never going to win anything, not even with Rooney et al. fit and playing. Sven's England also never won anything. Might Mourinho's England be good enough? Or O'Neill's England? Or Capello's England?

Frankly, it was only Ramsey's England that ever won a major tournament. That was 41 years ago when England had the advantage of being World Cup hosts. Since then, zilch. I don't even think this lack of silverware has much to do with the quality of the players or the coaching. English teams go into all tournaments with expectations far out of proportion to their actual accomplishments. Teams like Italy, Germany and Brazil equally sky-high expectations, but importantly, they also have the track record to justify the expectations. It makes all the difference; at some point, English players probably become stifled by self-expectations, but the teams with traditions of success can feed off expectations to instill self-belief and a sense of destiny.

Perhaps it is time for England to stop regarding itself as a major footballing nation on the international stage. The English Premier League is certainly a major footballing league and top English clubs are certainly major clubs, but the national team? Not so much. England should stop going into tournaments with any expectation of victory, and just be happy to have qualified at all. Freed from the straitjacket of unrealistic expectations, perhaps they might start playing to their potential and achieve something - not a tournament championship, perhaps, but at least respect and the admiration of the footballing world. And who knows, if they get their act together, England as minnows might even win something. After all, Denmark and Greece came from nowhere to become European Champions.