Our footballers are coming home...soon

England 1 v 2 Uruguay

I prefer my footballers without the hype machines behind them, and with a sense of humour.

“At least I've got an away supporters' song”. Lee Dixon's approach to “If Lee Dixon plays for England so can I”. Self-effacing humour isn't obvious in the make-up of Steve Gerrard or Wayne Rooney. Gerrard had a massive season for Liverpool, but his World Cup has picked up where his slip against Chelsea left off. Rooney was pretty anonymous in a poor season for his club, again, hasn't set the World Cup alight.

Teams succeed through being more than the sum of their players' abilities, and England continue to repeat mistakes. Understandable mistakes, but mistakes that employing and listening to a nerd like the one in Moneyball would help them avoid:

Statistically, there's not going to be an even spread to your best players. One country will not have the best centre half, centre mid, and centre forward in the world at any one time. Much more likely to have three of the best defensive midfielders, and only room for one. England try to crowbar the better player into the side, for example, playing a disinterested and out of position Gerrard at left mid, in front of a young Ashley Cole. Cole got massive stick in the papers from lazy writers and from the idiot pundits in other media, too shortsighted or too old and cynical to be bothered to point out that on the flanks the best teams deploy two players working together. So, yes, it's a great shame that you have the two best left backs in the world and can only play one of them, in position, but there it is.

Instinctive thinking is that leaving out one of your best players deprives you one of your best players. That's not the case. It deprives you of the difference between that players and whoever takes his place. Often the difference is marginal, and often it disappears, particularly if the slightly less gifted is prepared to work a little bit harder, or is a better fit, team-wise.

Teams that win international tournaments have incredible pace and power, allied to technical capabilities and impeccable decision-making. First of all, they do the right things, almost invariably, with unflagging concentration, without fatigue. They to those right things very, very well. For example, when David Seaman rolled the ball into the path of a fullback, he not only rolled it precisely, and with the right pace for the player to pick it up without breaking stride, he also put a bit of side spin on the ball, so that it curved slightly, giving the player a bit more time, and shaping the path of the ball to the optimal. Get together enough players with amazing, OCD-level approach to the process of winning games, and you start winning games. Teams that win international tournaments have the ability to get through the inevitable penalty shoot outs along the way. They have five or six players with ice in their veins. They have some luck or some magic, too.

Contrary to the foreigners in the Premiership garbage, you don't need a vast pool of fair to middling international players. Not unless elimination in the early group stages, a fair to middling outcome, is the extent of your ambition. Fifteen physical freaks with great techniques, three or four of who would walk into any international team in the world, at least one of who is on fire for the tournament, is what you need.

Watch the managers of those successful teams. Largely they're pretty calm. Comparing everyone we get to Demento and going on about his 'passion' (the biography showed Demento's passion was Demento) and his hairdryer halftime meltdowns. They manage in terms of enabling their players to do what they do best. Management and leadership are different things, and teams need leaders on the pitch, not on the touchline.

What the England team need, I think, is a management team with the courage to front the FA, the media, and the nation and say “this isn't working and hasn't worked for ages, so we need to scrap it and start reviewing how we do things, top to bottom”.