English farce needs new direction

Scene One: Monday afternoon, the piazza outside Eindhoven central station.

The visitor to Eindhoven, birthplace of the videotape recorder and compact disc, and about half an hour from Belgium, is confronted by a horizon crammed with people. They are mainly English, and relaxed. It is a Bank Holiday Monday, the sun's out and it's game on. The mood is just slightly less than carnival. Giant speakers belt out music for the masses. The tune is a familiar one: Embarrassment by Madness.

Scene two: Monday night, the media room in the Phillips Stadium, Eindhoven.

Again the visitor is confronted by a horizon of people. They are journalists, mainly English, and they are not relaxed. The mood is just slightly less than suicidal. There is no music, just the sound of anxious questions and strained answers. Somewhere internally, that Embarrassment song plays on.

Facing into the glare created by television's cameras and lights are Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer. One of them is the manager of England, but it is difficult to tell which. The one with the job, Keegan, is about as depressed as a weather-girl. That tornado? Just a shower.

The other, Shearer, looks like a manager who has just ripped each of his players' hearts out, stamped all over them and who then goes out and defends them publicly. "That's a bitterly disappointed dressingroom down there, I can tell you," he says through thin, dry lips. His anger is about as well hidden as his receding hairline.

Keegan, meanwhile, chirps on. "I think we can still win it," he says straight-faced to whatever the collective noun is for a group of perplexed stares. A furrow? Keegan was not talking about the Portugal match, demonstrating at the very least that he knows the game ends once the final whistle goes. No, Keegan was talking about the championship. "I've got to believe that," he said.

We don't. We can't, wee Kev. Not with David Seaman - "diving underneath shots a speciality" - in such form; not with Shakespeare-reciting Tony Adams undecided whether to be or not to be a tackler; and not with Emile Heskey, a sprinter with a football, not a footballer with a sprint.

Those are three good reasons not be cheerful if you are the England manager. There are more. Sol Campbell, for one, Michael Owen's inability to trap a ball another. And then there's Germany.

Scene three: Tuesday, back in base camp Spa, Belgium, the afternoon after the night before. The inquest.

The English reasons not to be upbeat have grown. Steve McManaman, the only England player apparently capable of receiving the ball and holding onto it for more than a fraction of a second, the only one who seemed to understand that England needed to slow down on Monday night, regroup further up the pitch, and then play their football, is out of Saturday's match against Germany.

It is a blow to England far greater than could have been imagined eight weeks ago. McManaman collapsed with a knee injury and one of England's most confident performers - see his goal - is lost.

So, too, revealed Keegan, is Adams. All's well that defends well, but Adams, 33, is a defender now handicapped with a bad back. It is beginning to show. But not this Saturday. Adams, like McManaman, is out.

Owen says he also took a knock - "the calf stiffened up" - but he is vulnerable to Keegan's selection policy. Martin Keown, Steven Gerrard, Dennis Wise and Robbie Fowler will train extra-hard these next three days. Watch out for Fowler.

And Keegan? "I can certainly think of a fair few things we could have done better. But there were a lot of positives in there that get overlooked. Our finishing was good and our character was good. I'm disappointed but I still feel we've got it in our own hands."

Yeah, Kev, but what about your tactics? This isn't Newcastle you know. "People have criticised what happened, some of them having done the job without making a particular success of it. Look, when the Football Association appointed me, it was because of what I was. They didn't say: `We know what you can do, but we would like you to change.' They took me warts and all. I have a style of management and that is not going to change. It would be going against myself and my beliefs."

Keegan was right about that. This was the man who said on being appointed full-time coach: "If it's a 0-0 draw in the Ukraine you're looking for, then I'm probably not your man." The trouble is that international football requires just exactly that kind of Ukrainian result. And yet England's performance on Monday could hardly be called bold. Occasionally competent, largely fretful, perhaps, but this was not the verve of Newcastle despite the two-goal lead. Losing it was fairly Newcastle, though.

So now for motivation. David Beckham's patriotism will be encouraged in spite of the abuse he took from England fans. Seaman will have to have his hair cut. There will have to be some organisation found. It will be Keegan's biggest test.

Scene four: Saturday, Charleroi. Can't wait.