So Costa Rica surprised everybody except those paying attention by beating Italy 1-0, sealing England’s early exit from the Worldcup. Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin.
But should we really be surprised that England didn’t qualified from the group stages? They’re after all a decentish team which had the bad luck to be drawn into the same group as a great team rebuilding itself (Italy), another decent to good team with some world class players which went much further in the last Worldcup than everybody thought possible (Uruguay) as well as a team that should’ve been there just to make up the numbers but turned out to hold their own against a team that supposed to beat them (Costa Rica).
Both the idea that England should of course qualify from this group and the idea that now it seems unlikely they will, some sort of special circumstances need to be found to explain this are a symptom of how overrated England is.
Spain is the surprise knockout because they won an European Cup, World Cup and another European Cup one after another, had therefore arguably been the best team in the world for the best part of a decade. When Italy and France were knocked out in the previous tournament, these had been WC winners/contenders not long before.
England on the other hand has been striving for mediocrity for most of that time, not noticeably better than a team like Poland, Portugal or Greece. Had they had a bit of better luck this game they could’ve qualified, but their luck was back so they didn’t.
Par for the course.
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