More Football

And another feeble TV-from-the-couch image. So England reached the men's World Cup football semi-final, and for a while at least - most of the first half - they looked like they could go one better than the team of 1990 and reach their first final I can remember. (I was only two in 1966.) It looked like the young team, mostly without massive egos and with a strong sense of teamwork, might just do it. Was it actually a by-product of the foreign players in the English Premier League? So long blamed for the weak performances of the national team at international tournaments, maybe the fact that most of the big names in the top clubs play for other countries actually helped, as the England team, with the exception of captain Harry Kane, are used to more supporting roles in their club sides. Being less the centre of attention and therefore better at working together for the team. Did other countries suffer more when their big names didn't deliver? Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, de Bruyne and Hazard were all out of the tournament before Maguire, Trippier and Stones. For the big name players is it the case that international football just isn't important enough? Rather than international football having confounded reports of its demise, as the pundits were claiming last night, it actually remains second best to the very best club competitions like the leagues of Spain, England, Germany and Italy and the Champions League, where the biggest chequebooks can assemble the best teams, unrestricted by national eligibility. And therefore England's success this time round is based on fielding a team for whom international success could represent their best chance of winning something. Much was made in the aftermath of the lack of experience in the England team when it came to having won top honours. Half of the team have never won a top flight league or cup. Just five players, from three clubs, have a league winners medal. Was that lack of experience ultimately costly?  Because something went wrong and they let the early lead slip away. Big name Harry Kane missed a great chance in the first half and other opportunities slipped by. And in the second half Croatia came back into it. Croatia, who were supposed to be tired after two previous extra-time victories, took control of the ball and the game. The English media had slipped back to old habits, talking about the final one game too soon. Football was coming home. It might have been couched as 'what if we win' but, as Roy Keane told the other pundits, the time for that is when you have won the semi-final, not before. Experience started to tell. An older team, with players who play in eight different countries, not just one, and who have six Champions League, thirty-seven domestic league and more than fifty cup winners medals between them, started to show the value of all that previous experience. And while that haul of medals, much of it at the highest levels of club competition, might be counter to my earlier hypothesis about international football, for a much smaller country like Croatia perhaps there is a different dimension at work. A still-new country (it didn't exist when England were last in a men's World Cup semi-final) with a strong sense of national identity is it in the sweet spot for nation status - somewhere between three and eight million population? Whatever the reason, they pulled the scores level and could have won in normal time. In extra-time the England keeper only kept them out with a save that surely would have merited a foul and possibly a sending off had the same tackle been made anywhere else on the pitch. Croatia finally got the winner as the England defence lost concentration for a crucial moment and that was it as time ran out on England's chances. Afterwards Croatia players said the English media's lack of respect for them had been a factor in their motivation to win. They played the underdog card, as you'd expect for a much smaller nation facing a bigger one, so that isn't surprising. Even if the English media had been as cautious as possible I think the Croatian team talk would have played up the idea that England might underestimate their opponents. But was the media's attitude a factor in the England team's defeat? Did the opportunity presented to them by the quirks of the draw mean the pressure of expectation ultimately got to them? We'll have to see. Next time, if the team stays together, England could be the experienced side against younger opposition. As it is, Croatia will take on another big nation on Sunday, hoping to beat France for the first time. I'll stop now, as I have already rambled far too long, but there must also be lessons for Scotland in Croatia's success. A smaller population but now into a men's World Cup Final. It can't surely be better facilities, but is it more of them, more readily, and freely, available? Perhaps Croatia protects its football pitches rather than selling them for housing? Thoughts for another time.