If you want to know how messed up we are as a nation, just look at our reaction when we lose a football match.In one breath, we say that there are too many foreign players in this country, and then we support those same teams to do well in the Premiership.

So England have failed to qualify for the European Championships.Should we be suprised??We have a team of well paid players who think that they are great when in fact they are not.In fact, most of them would not get into World XI.

Yet we insist on blaming it all on the coach.Yes McClaren was a poor choice, he was definitely out of his league.He was just not suited to coach at this level.The fact that we had to pray for Israel to bail us out says it all. But was McClaren the only cause of this disaster??Too easy to blame it all on him.

Many of the players on the England team don't care that much about major tournaments.They have the Champions League, which to them is more important.On top of that, the obscene amount of money they are paid means that they can still go back to their mock Tudor mansions/trophy girlfriends/turbocharged sports cars when they fail to qualify. Beckham can go back to LA,Ferdinand and his crew can go back to running up huge bar bills. In short, money has diluted the patriotism of the players. Why kill yourself for your country when you are earning 100G a week????

It is too easy to blame the decline of England as footballing power on foreigners. England failed to qualify for the World Cups of 1974,1978 and 1994.In 1970,believe it or not, England were the favourites to win the World Cup.

There were hardly any overseas players in the Premiership in those days.If you ignore 1966, and is time we did, England have failed to make it to another final of another major football competition.Some of the managers have been truly dire.Don Revy,Graham Taylor,Kevin Keegan,Glenn Hoddle and Steve McClaren. None of them were top class coaches.

Compare with Rugby, winners of the World Cup in 2003, and finalists this year. Maybe Clive Woodward who coached the winning rugby side should apply for the job.