Steve Bruce blind to Peter Crouch's powers

Matthew Norman
15.10.09

On a Wembley night of barely calculable irrelevance, it fell to an ITV pundit to reach into the embers of England's qualification campaign and pull out the one spark of controversy. What was Steve Bruce thinking in naming David Beckham as man of the match?

Beats me. During his cap-snaffling half-hour as substitute, Beckham produced some decent passes and cute touches, but that hardly explains it. Maybe the award was for the beard — a curiously-schizoid affair in which the lush, black rabbinical growths on the sides bear no relation whatever to the thin, gingery moustache (Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid).

To its credit, the beard had the grace to look as bewildered as its owner, and everyone else, by this unexpected Brucie Bonus.

“It was like Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize after eight months as President,” said Fabio Capello. “He gets the man of the match after 30 minutes here.”

Good game, good game? No it was not. In the circumstances, how could it have been? Didn't they do well?

England did all right, given the pointlessness of gaining three points against a mesmerisingly unthreatening Belarus in a match better suited for use as chemical-free narcotic than sporting entertainment.

But hark at me, all blase and dismissive. The ingratitude to Capello and his boys for having rendered it so dull is shocking when you recall games of the kind that were drenched in excruciating tension.

It was on the equivalent night 36 years ago, indeed, that I last wept over a football match. That's not strictly true. I cried when Luton Town scored twice in the dying moments of the 1988 League Cup Final to beat Arsenal 3-2, and again over Nayim from the halfway line. But that was from laughter, whereas it was paroxysmal grief that activated my nine-year-old lachrymals when Poland kept us from the 1974 finals with that heartrending 1-1 draw

So it behoved us to relish last night's lack of excruciation and celebrate it as the ultimate mark of how far Capello has taken England in the two years since the wally raised his brolly in defeat to Croatia.

Even so, Capello will neither have learned much from this, nor been heavily influenced about the minor placings in his squad. Of the understudies on stage, Peter Crouch came closest to stealing the show. He was what Tony Blair might style the people's man of the match — not just for the scrappy goals with which he bookended the game, but for troubling the Belarusians throughout with his movement and ever-surprising deftness of touch.

As for Gabriel Agbonlahor, he looked adequate by and large, and neatly set up the first of Crouchy's brace. But it's the human javelin whom Don Fabio will be tempted to take to South Africa, for much the same reason he'll presumably pick Beckham. Both are exceedingly useful characters to bring off the bench with 20 minutes left in a game that needs saving or winning.

Neither will start a World Cup match, barring an unusually biblical plague of injuries even by our standards. But as someone clever once so nearly put it (David Pleat? Or was it John Milton?), they also serve who only sit and wait.Of the rest, little needs be said. In goal, Ben Foster had just the one testing save to make and made it well to turn aside a viciously dipping drive.

Yet incredible and horrendous as it is, David James still appears the least awful option.

Gareth Barry controlled the tempo and sprayed the passes around well enough, which was no huge challenge against Belarus, while on an off night Aaron Lennon lacked the murderous speed and guile that terrorised Croatia a while ago.

As for Shaun Wright-Phillips, his goal was fine but a generally lacklustre display on the left confirmed how essential it is that Joe Cole returns to form and fitness forthwith.

This apart, there was nothing to be gleaned apart from the observation (almost too puerile even for me) that Belarus had the impertinence to field a guy called Shitov an hour before the 9pm watershed.

If we didn't anticipate that, we did expect England to confirm that without Wayne Rooney's craft and vision and Steven Gerrard's energy and brio, England have as much chance of reaching a World Cup Final as Chad.

The most revealing moment came when Don Fabio celebrated SWP's middle goal with arms raised and broad grin. Unlike such ingrates as myself, this man cares desperately about every moment of every game, regardless of context and importance, and therein perhaps lies England's best hope of adding to 1966 and all that.

Somehow, the Italian's iron will and scarily-intense perfectionism, allied to the thoroughness of his preparation and tactical mastery, make him Rooney's likeliest rival for England's man of the tournament.

As for last night's man of the match, I'm no closer to cracking the conundrum in this last paragraph than I was in the first. All I can state with certainty is this. If something should happen (God forbid) to Alesha Dixon, and the BBC is too proud to reinstate Arlene Phillips, they will not be offering the vacant judge's seat to Steve Bruce.