Following England’s miserable 0-0 draw with Algeria in the second phase of Group C games at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, fans and media alike turned on the participants of that debacle with a ferocity rarely seen at England games. Striker Wayne Rooney was seen to mouth an attack on the fans in the stadium who were rightly booing the insipid performance that had just been served up. Back home, the fans lambasted the coach and players and expressed their disgust at what seemed to be a total lack of desire to give 100% effort. Coupled with a fan entering the England dressing room and supposedly confronting David Beckham, the disastrous night probably went down as one of the worst in English football’s long history.

As always, it seems that once you hit the bottom of the barrel, the only place to go is up and today certainly seemed to herald a new attitude in the England camp. It started with the appearance of John Terry at the first scheduled press conference since the Algeria game. His forthright comments outlined a level of frustration with manager Fabio Capello who seems to have dropped several levels in popularity since the tournament got under way. Top of Terry’s list was the indication that the players want to see Joe Cole back in the team, and I can’t say I blame them. He has a level of intensity that we haven’t seen yet in South Africa and it seems that Capello’s reluctance to play him might be part of some of the issues between team and manager. During the press conference, Terry said that there would be a meeting of the squad and management team to “clear the air” and commented that, if Capello wasn’t happy with some of the comments, then “So what. I’m here to win it for England”

An interesting conclusion I drew from the press conference today was that it looks like John Terry is still the natural leader of the squad, despite his removal from the captaincy. His status does not look to have been affected by being replaced as captain, and it could be that the players themselves were not happy that Terry was stripped of the role by Capello following revelations in the press about his affair with Vanessa Perroncel. Terry looked comfortable today in front of the cameras and was very insistent that his role within the squad had never changed.

Other players have voiced displeasure at some of the Italian’s methods, in particular, the goalkeepers who feel that they have no preparation time when Capello insists on waiting until two hours before kick-off before naming his starting line-up. David James, when asked about when he was told he would be playing, said “Five minutes before I got on the bus. Usual standard”. Another bone of contention has been the roles of Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard. Capello has a lot of faith in Emile Heskey playing as a target man with Rooney as the second striker, which appears to generate a high level of frustration in the Man Utd forward, who seems to drop deeper and deeper in to midfield as the game progresses, just to gain some possession. What the players appear to want is Steven Gerrard playing behind Rooney who would be the lone striker. There is no doubt that all this displeasure creates an area of mistrust in Capello as a manager, and he is definitely not the type of character to take this on the chin and not react angrily. He has a history during his days as a club manager at Real Madrid, and AC Milan of being a harsh taskmaster, just ask David Beckham. However his methods seemed to have been successful during the qualifying phase.

The real issue I think is that during the qualifying rounds, the players and Capello were only together for short periods, so his methods were accepted, but since preparations for the World Cup began, they have been living out of each others pockets for the last 30-40 days, which has taken it’s toll on the players. The previous two World Cups were led by Sven Goran Eriksson whose training camps were run more like country clubs. Capello’s camps are more like boot camps in the military and it’s been a hard road for the squad to follow. I like Capello’s methods, but in retrospect, I think it would have made more sense to have drawn a happy medium between country club and boot camp in order to strike the right blend of surroundings where the players could feel comfortable, but where there would be a strong level of discipline.

What today showed to me, for the first time, is that the players are done with trotting up to the microphone and telling one and all that “we’ll play better next time”. They are done with making the politically correct statements that mean nothing to anyone. They showed that they REALLY do care about winning. It’s sad that it had to get to this point before anything was done, and maybe the booing by the fans after the game, did serve it’s purpose. We’ll know if any of this was worth it when Capello announces his team for Wednesday, but you can bet that if he fields the same line-up as Friday, and we crash out of this tournament, then it will be his last game in charge.

Let’s hope that’s not the case.