Heroes betrayed by McClaren

Unless a Russian expeditionary force walks into an ambush in Israel next month, which is about as likely as Vladimir Putin abdicating all authority in Moscow, McClaren signed his own termination papers here last night.

That is the price to be paid by this manager if he has cost his country qualification for a major championship for the first time in 14 years.

There is no defence in the questionable validity of Russia's equalising penalty. Nor should the buck stop with Wayne Rooney for his muddlesome part in that incident, not after he plucked a dream goal out of the morass of McClaren's team selection.

It was the flawed — yes, Cardiganesque — formation with which McClaren sent England into the most deafening, most oppressive bear pit ever built for the purposes of football which led England into this disaster.

That was compounded by the fatal sluggishness of his reactions when the second Russian goal demanded instant substitutions if England were to have any hope of hauling themselves back from the precipice of elimination from Euro 2008.

This was the loudest, most hostile environment I have experienced in 40 years of reporting football matches around the world. Only that controversial playing surface was artificial.

To send England into the Luzhniki Stadium with a nervous novice at left-back, a goalkeeper suffering a crisis of confidence and, most ruinously of all, outnumbered in midfield by more gifted technicians was nothing short of suicidal.

The only miracle was that the individuals in this ill-chosen team clung on so long to Rooney's wondrous control of an Olde England long ball and his thunderous finish.

Rugby players, after all, are not the only English sportsmen with the courage to dig in on a foreign field when the atmosphere, the superior skills of their opponents and, in this case, even the conditions are stacked as heavily against them as the odds of breaking the bank in Monte Carlo.

The roaring Muscovites unfurled a flag they claimed to be the largest ever made. It featured a huge Russian bear with fangs dripping and claws bared. The trap was set for England's three lions.

It was baited in the form of a pitch doctored by both a plastic surgeon and Russia's answer to Gunga Din, history's most famous water bearer.

That shiny, slithery field was rendered more treacherous by the thousands of gallons fountained on to it before the start of each half.

England's much berated multimillionaire footballers stepped out of their mink-lined comfort zone to meet that contrived challenge. Like the rugby men back in France they laid their bodies on the line to block shots and runners and put in the last-ditch tackles.

It was not their fortitude that was found wanting, not on this most testing of occasions. They were misled by their general.

The pitch had to be coped with, like it or not, and that demanded Frank Lampard's addition to a midfield capable of keeping the ball. One of the forwards who kept giving that precious object away, presumably Shaun Wright-Phillips, should have been sacrificed.

Not only was Lampard omitted from the starting line-up but McClaren, in defiance of the evidence of his own eyes as Russians swarmed around his defence, kept him on the bench beyond the interval.

Just as contrary was the decision to start Joleon Lescott at left-back after his apprehensive substitute debut against Estonia on Saturday.

That was cruelty to an internationally inexperienced player and Russia duly overloaded that flank, to the additional English disadvantage of potential match-winner Joe Cole having to tackle back in support.

As for Paul Robinson, can it really have come as a surprise that the goalkeeper should do yet again what he has taken to doing most weekends for Tottenham — palm a shot down to the feet of an onrushing scorer?

Russian substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko could no more miss that gift than his penalty four minutes earlier. Thus it was by virtue of this key change that Dutch coach Guus Hiddink achieved his first victory in 10 attempts against English opposition.

McClaren's response was pitiful.

There were 17 minutes remaining when the Russian winner went in, barely 10 left by the time McClaren worked out what to do.

Then, when would-be heroes Lampard, Crouch and Downing did go on, it was to become part of a team already in disarray.