Unglorious Bas*****

Keith Ingham speaks about England's shocking loss to Iceland on Monday evening and points the finger at who's to blame.

I'm old enough to remember when the lions roared in 1966. I was only a six-year old boy but remember something really special happened in that summer. Since then I've seen the tackle by Moore, when Lineker scored and 'Psycho' screaming (Three Lions) but precious little else.

The ignominious exit of the England team to a better organised and more determined Iceland team was the last straw to many.

We haven't done well recently in tournaments under 'Woy' Hodgson, a manager more adapt to looking after a under10 team than a national team.

The blame though doesn't stop with him, no way, in estimates the England team collectively is worth over 500million but played as if they'd never seen a ball. They struggled through a pretty easy group only to fall again at the knockout stage, it it's ten years since we won a game after the group games, Ecuador I think, 1-0.

Where do we go from here, do the fans care? Well many who spend thousands of euros following these under achievers may do but on the whole people are far more interested in their club teams returning to action in August. Why bother about a set of overpaid, as a newscaster said 'nonces'?

The national game, in my opinion, is at a crossroads and something radical needs to be done to avoid England becoming a second rate football nation.

Howard Wilkinson had a plan after he left Leeds but his ideas were not taken up by the English FA. A similar plan was then implemented by the German FA and after winning the under21 tournament, nine of the players that were in that team later won the World Cup.

It can be done but not by continuing to pay football players hundreds of thousands of pounds. There needs to be a ceiling of no more than 100k a week, and even that is too much money for chasing a ball around a grass field for 90+ minutes.

If the players don't like it, let them bugger off abroad and see them come back with their tails between their legs after it all went Pete Tong.

Sky has to take some blame for the incredible wages that clubs pay because without their millions they surely wouldn't have the financial clout to offer the players such amounts of money.

In a short space of time you have seen the country exit Europe twice, what happens now to the country and the football team is up for debate.

One thing clear though is if a team that comes from a country as big as Leicester can beat us without much effort, we seriously are in for a few uncertain years in the international football wilderness.

By Keith Ingham