The England Football Team and their Absent Super-Egos
In my suitable after-the-event way, I am posting today with my thoughts on the England football team, why they brushed aside Bulgaria and (watch out tabloids) ROLLED over the Swiss, but yet when they come up against the might of Albania and the USA in major tournaments, drop out with barely a whimper.
I really wasn't going to write this, but have to hear so much guff written and said about football every day, that I feel someone had to make an effort.
So what reasons do we have so far to explain England failure?
They don’t care about playing for their country.
They don’t play as a team
They don’t have the talent
They don’t want to play for the manager.
And so on and so on. All of these may have some element of truth, but all of them miss the key elements of the problem. Yes, when they went down against Germany they didn’t seem to care; yes, there seemed to be a reaction against the manager’s disciplinary regime; and yes, they seemed to be playing as individuals rather than a team – but why is this? Why did they start the Albania game playing like headless chickens? Why do these players, so talented, play like completely different people when they put on an England shirt?
A simple explanation is that they are spoilt, passionless, selfish idiots, but come on – really? Do you really believe that these players, who work hard every day for their clubs, who mostly have performed at the peak of the game, season in, season out, put on an England shirt and decide that they don’t care, that they don’t want to play as well as they can?
It’s got to be more complicated than that. It is. You could see it in the Albania game – they all went off like greyhounds of the traps. They wanted to well – all of them. But at the same time, this showed exactly what the problem was. They are scared.
A footballer who plays for England is going to have an ego. We all do. The ego is the way the mind organizes all our simple, rudimentary drives – it is our personality, our ‘self.’ Without it we would be nothing but an eating, drinking and shagging beings with no complex emotions or long term perspective. I know what you might think, but these are professional footballers - they would not have got to where they were without a lot of hard work and drive – and remember, the ego is still about hunger and sex – it just puts these desires into a liveable framework.
However, above the mere ego is another attribute in all humans – the super-ego. This balances out our natural lusts and desires, by telling us what is appropriate and what isn’t, what’s right and what’s wrong, what we should feel guilty about, how we need to adapt in different circumstances and occasions. It is our conscience, in short term, acting in opposition to our more lascivious needs. It regulates our ego. It is this, I suggest, that is missing from the England footballer of today.
An Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney or John Terry does not have a super-ego, in the way a normal man does. They cannot regulate their ID, their desires and their need to gratify them. They have no conscience to answer to, no sense of regulation or decorum. In their indigenous environments – as John Terry at Chelsea or Steven Gerrard at Liverpool - they are treated like Gods , and their actions are not susceptible to the realistic expectations of the normal man. They can do what they want, sleep who they want to sleep with, live how they want to live, because only their club is there to regulate them and in their club they are God. Their egos have been created from this environment, to the point where they might reasonably assert – ‘I am John terry - I am God’ - and it would be hard to disagree. However, this presents serious difficulties when it comes to transferring their skills to a different environment. Because their egos have not been subject to real-world limitations, it becomes a lot harder to deal with a situation where they are not the be-all and end-all. Hey, it’s not that they don’t want it - they want to be the best players in the world - but their egos mean they can’t see the ways they need to act to achieve this. Their desires and their wants become so used to being satisfied, they find it very difficult to utilize their super-egos.
Maintaining a godly ego is difficult - it is a very fragile thing. We all know this - we have well-developed super-egos - but England footballers do not. They have not had the chance because they have been able to stay sucking the teat of their perfect club lives for a long time. However, international football is different to this, particularly at a tournament level. The pressures become greater, expectations rise and the standard is at the highest level. The super-ego knows that it won’t be easy, that there will be problems and that you will have to adapt. It also knows that you shouldn’t expected to be the best every game, that not everything relies on you and that you might have to develop new ways of playing to fit in with those around you. Life may be different for a few weeks, difficulty and new, and you need to be prepared for this, you’ll need to compromise what you usually find easy.
‘But hold on. I am a god. I know exactly what works for me, how to play, how to prepare, what environment I should be in. I have to stay like this, otherwise I won’t be God anymore.
The public are desperate. The press have built me up. I have to be me – Wayne Rooney, John Terry – now is not the time to be someone else, now is not for someone telling me what else to do.
I step on the field. It’s the first match. I want to pass – give me the ball. Frank goes somewhere else. Gerrard goes left. It goes off for a throw. I don’t like it – I don’t like the way we’re playing. I don’t know if I can play like this.
It is not working and it is clear something different has to be done. They should be playing differently. It should be me – it’s all about me.
I try a shot from thirty yards and it doesn’t work. I’ve hit it too hard. I never hit it like that for Man Utd or Chelsea or Liverpool.
The mangers shouting, the fans are booing. Idiots. What do they know? They haven’t got a clue what this is like. I can’t do everything on my own.’
Each of the players wants to do as well as they can, but they cannot do it. They are playing how they know, but it is not working. Their ego is being questioned and they have no answer for it, which means it must be someone or something else’s fault. It cannot be them. They don’t want to pass, don’t want to shoot, because they cannot be certain what will happen.
The reality is that they are scared. They have been questioned for the first time and they do not like it. With egos like these, with no super-ego to placate it, they exhibit almost manic levels of behavior. Normally they can be God, but if it not going their way, they are the opposite – a normal, a nobody – and hence they get defensive, try too hard and lash out when they fail. Rooney shouts at the fans. Lampard gets defensive. Terry starts a revolt. What else can they do?
That, in short is the problem. There is nothing else they can do. The England footballer is not equipped for playing in an England team, not with the way they are hyped and praised and pampered and leant upon. They simply are not equipped psychology. Yes, they are spoilt, but it is not just this – it is the extent to which they are covered, like gods, like supermen, that makes them who they are. It isn’t their fault.
The question is, how do we change this? Well, the answer is not in Capello’s disciplinary method. If someone who is outwardly super-confident and self-important, who is told how great he is every day, then you are not going to rid him of his inner fears by barking orders at him or banning him from having a drink at the end of the day. If anything, the players are going to become more defensive, and play even more like a headless chicken trying to prove a point. Nor can you just let them manage themselves. They need some synthetic framework around them, otherwise the basic ego will take over completely. No, what the England footballer needs a new identity – they need to be treated like human beings, whatever their foilings and failures. We need to encourage the super-ego, to create realism – that if they do not succeed, they can adapt and do better in a different way. Playing for England needs to be await a way of playing, a team and then the individual therein, but it needs to be clear what it is and explained in a way that doesn’t treat the players like idiots.
In a sense, a World Cup failure could be the perfect tonic. It can give us realism, a sense of what works and what doesn’t – but only if the right failures are recognized and acted upon. We don’t need someone ‘to motivate’ because our players are lazy or apathetic. They are neither. We do not need someone to ‘kick them into line’ or conversely an English manager ‘to be their friend.’ We need someone who can show them what is wrong and what needs fixing, without turning them on the defensive. They need treating like the flawed individual they are, like we all are, but that there is way to act together, that means they can become something great. If they are willing to accept this, and try and do this, then we should do all we can – and if not, then get the John Terry out of there.
I really wasn't going to write this, but have to hear so much guff written and said about football every day, that I feel someone had to make an effort.
So what reasons do we have so far to explain England failure?
They don’t care about playing for their country.
They don’t play as a team
They don’t have the talent
They don’t want to play for the manager.
And so on and so on. All of these may have some element of truth, but all of them miss the key elements of the problem. Yes, when they went down against Germany they didn’t seem to care; yes, there seemed to be a reaction against the manager’s disciplinary regime; and yes, they seemed to be playing as individuals rather than a team – but why is this? Why did they start the Albania game playing like headless chickens? Why do these players, so talented, play like completely different people when they put on an England shirt?
A simple explanation is that they are spoilt, passionless, selfish idiots, but come on – really? Do you really believe that these players, who work hard every day for their clubs, who mostly have performed at the peak of the game, season in, season out, put on an England shirt and decide that they don’t care, that they don’t want to play as well as they can?
It’s got to be more complicated than that. It is. You could see it in the Albania game – they all went off like greyhounds of the traps. They wanted to well – all of them. But at the same time, this showed exactly what the problem was. They are scared.
A footballer who plays for England is going to have an ego. We all do. The ego is the way the mind organizes all our simple, rudimentary drives – it is our personality, our ‘self.’ Without it we would be nothing but an eating, drinking and shagging beings with no complex emotions or long term perspective. I know what you might think, but these are professional footballers - they would not have got to where they were without a lot of hard work and drive – and remember, the ego is still about hunger and sex – it just puts these desires into a liveable framework.
However, above the mere ego is another attribute in all humans – the super-ego. This balances out our natural lusts and desires, by telling us what is appropriate and what isn’t, what’s right and what’s wrong, what we should feel guilty about, how we need to adapt in different circumstances and occasions. It is our conscience, in short term, acting in opposition to our more lascivious needs. It regulates our ego. It is this, I suggest, that is missing from the England footballer of today.
An Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney or John Terry does not have a super-ego, in the way a normal man does. They cannot regulate their ID, their desires and their need to gratify them. They have no conscience to answer to, no sense of regulation or decorum. In their indigenous environments – as John Terry at Chelsea or Steven Gerrard at Liverpool - they are treated like Gods , and their actions are not susceptible to the realistic expectations of the normal man. They can do what they want, sleep who they want to sleep with, live how they want to live, because only their club is there to regulate them and in their club they are God. Their egos have been created from this environment, to the point where they might reasonably assert – ‘I am John terry - I am God’ - and it would be hard to disagree. However, this presents serious difficulties when it comes to transferring their skills to a different environment. Because their egos have not been subject to real-world limitations, it becomes a lot harder to deal with a situation where they are not the be-all and end-all. Hey, it’s not that they don’t want it - they want to be the best players in the world - but their egos mean they can’t see the ways they need to act to achieve this. Their desires and their wants become so used to being satisfied, they find it very difficult to utilize their super-egos.
Maintaining a godly ego is difficult - it is a very fragile thing. We all know this - we have well-developed super-egos - but England footballers do not. They have not had the chance because they have been able to stay sucking the teat of their perfect club lives for a long time. However, international football is different to this, particularly at a tournament level. The pressures become greater, expectations rise and the standard is at the highest level. The super-ego knows that it won’t be easy, that there will be problems and that you will have to adapt. It also knows that you shouldn’t expected to be the best every game, that not everything relies on you and that you might have to develop new ways of playing to fit in with those around you. Life may be different for a few weeks, difficulty and new, and you need to be prepared for this, you’ll need to compromise what you usually find easy.
‘But hold on. I am a god. I know exactly what works for me, how to play, how to prepare, what environment I should be in. I have to stay like this, otherwise I won’t be God anymore.
The public are desperate. The press have built me up. I have to be me – Wayne Rooney, John Terry – now is not the time to be someone else, now is not for someone telling me what else to do.
I step on the field. It’s the first match. I want to pass – give me the ball. Frank goes somewhere else. Gerrard goes left. It goes off for a throw. I don’t like it – I don’t like the way we’re playing. I don’t know if I can play like this.
It is not working and it is clear something different has to be done. They should be playing differently. It should be me – it’s all about me.
I try a shot from thirty yards and it doesn’t work. I’ve hit it too hard. I never hit it like that for Man Utd or Chelsea or Liverpool.
The mangers shouting, the fans are booing. Idiots. What do they know? They haven’t got a clue what this is like. I can’t do everything on my own.’
Each of the players wants to do as well as they can, but they cannot do it. They are playing how they know, but it is not working. Their ego is being questioned and they have no answer for it, which means it must be someone or something else’s fault. It cannot be them. They don’t want to pass, don’t want to shoot, because they cannot be certain what will happen.
The reality is that they are scared. They have been questioned for the first time and they do not like it. With egos like these, with no super-ego to placate it, they exhibit almost manic levels of behavior. Normally they can be God, but if it not going their way, they are the opposite – a normal, a nobody – and hence they get defensive, try too hard and lash out when they fail. Rooney shouts at the fans. Lampard gets defensive. Terry starts a revolt. What else can they do?
That, in short is the problem. There is nothing else they can do. The England footballer is not equipped for playing in an England team, not with the way they are hyped and praised and pampered and leant upon. They simply are not equipped psychology. Yes, they are spoilt, but it is not just this – it is the extent to which they are covered, like gods, like supermen, that makes them who they are. It isn’t their fault.
The question is, how do we change this? Well, the answer is not in Capello’s disciplinary method. If someone who is outwardly super-confident and self-important, who is told how great he is every day, then you are not going to rid him of his inner fears by barking orders at him or banning him from having a drink at the end of the day. If anything, the players are going to become more defensive, and play even more like a headless chicken trying to prove a point. Nor can you just let them manage themselves. They need some synthetic framework around them, otherwise the basic ego will take over completely. No, what the England footballer needs a new identity – they need to be treated like human beings, whatever their foilings and failures. We need to encourage the super-ego, to create realism – that if they do not succeed, they can adapt and do better in a different way. Playing for England needs to be await a way of playing, a team and then the individual therein, but it needs to be clear what it is and explained in a way that doesn’t treat the players like idiots.
In a sense, a World Cup failure could be the perfect tonic. It can give us realism, a sense of what works and what doesn’t – but only if the right failures are recognized and acted upon. We don’t need someone ‘to motivate’ because our players are lazy or apathetic. They are neither. We do not need someone to ‘kick them into line’ or conversely an English manager ‘to be their friend.’ We need someone who can show them what is wrong and what needs fixing, without turning them on the defensive. They need treating like the flawed individual they are, like we all are, but that there is way to act together, that means they can become something great. If they are willing to accept this, and try and do this, then we should do all we can – and if not, then get the John Terry out of there.
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