England hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the 2018 World Cup finals when the vote is revealed in Zurich next month.
I make this assessment for two reasons.
Firstly, the negative press that has surrounded the English bid, which has been staggering and continues to be staggering.
Papers like the Sunday Times, which has made allegations about two FIFA members, have damaged England’s prospects of getting the finals for the first time since 1966.
FIFA hates that kind of controversy, and the last thing they want is to award England the 2018 World Cup so they have to put up with another seven years of knocking stories by the home press.
The British media has this tendency of trying to find scandal in every area of football. Often the stories have attacked England – as in the one by the Mail on Sunday about Lord Triesman, when he was chairman of the bid committee.
And the media have published lots of other stories knocking England, like the ones about Wayne Rooney and Peter Crouch being involved with prostitutes, or Ashley and Cheryl Cole splitting up.
My sources in FIFA tell me that because of all this, England has got no chance of getting the 2018 finals.
The second reason is that there is a massive groundswell of approval for Spain after the way in which they won the European title and then the World Cup. Spain are the best team in the world, and they have two of the leading club sides in the world in Barcelona and Real Madrid, and that counts for a lot.
I don’t think Spain has enough facilities to host the World Cup finals on its own, but as it is bidding jointly with Portugal I believe the 2018 finals will go there. It just seems like the best fit.
Does that make me feel sad? It makes me feel desperately sad from one point of view. Purely from a footballing angle I would love to see the World Cup finals come back to England.
Unfortunately the Premier League is no longer an English League, and by 2018 I see the England team becoming incredibly ordinary.
People are telling me we have a new generation of talented youngsters on their way, but I don’t see that.
Take someone like Jack Wilshere (pictured), at Arsenal. People have been raving about him in the media. What I see is a good young footballer. But is he a Cesc Fabregas? No. He is nowhere close. He is not the same quality of players such as Germany’s Thomas Muller.
Joe Cole, at one stage, was going to be the next big thing, but he turned out to be a very ordinary international footballer.
Then there was the media backing for Stewart Downing, the winger who used to play for Middlesbrough and is now with Villa. Steve McLaren once said Downing was as good a crosser of the ball as David Beckham. I thought at the time: “Are you mad?”
Before this year’s World Cup finals, I wrote in insideworldfootball that England could not expect to get through seven matches because at times they played like Bolton Wanderers, with defenders lumping the ball forward almost in desperation.
I didn’t realise how close to the mark I was – because at 33, Bolton’s forward Kevin Davies was called up by Fabio Capello and given a first cap as a substitute in the 0-0 home draw against Montenegro.
That is desperation.
I think the natural level of the England team will deteriorate so much that by the time the next World Cup finals come around they will not be ranked in the world’s top 20. That would be embarrassing – but I see it happening.
Rodney Marsh is one of the most charismatic and entertaining players to have graced English football. He played more than 400 games and scored over 150 goals during a career at Queen’s Park Rangers, Manchester City and Fulham which saw him win nine England caps. He was also one of the early pioneers of English players to carve out a name for himself in the United States, scoring 41 goals in 87 appearances for the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Marsh is now a popular and respected pundit who will be writing regularly for insideworldfootball.