Why can't England get its act together?

They may be just a point away from qualifying for Euro 2012, they may have lost a crucial goal to a referee's howler in South Africa, they may have the two most feared midfielders in Europe playing for them and a pair of centre-halves who epitomise their clubs in red and blue, but they still cannot play together.As Ashley Young runs in from the left to sky-rocket a lovely curler in the back of the net against Arsenal, United fans are happy their new player is justifying the No. 18 on the back of his shirt and as Gareth Barry scorches in one for Man City, it is weird how this bunch of players cannot exude the same pride while playing for their country. The England national football team's situation is, in plain words, an unpredictable story.[caption id="attachment_78491" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="It is a known fact already that the Dutch and Spanish, the current top teams in the world, train their players for a lot more hours than in England. Getty Images"][/caption]If Robert Earnshaw’s head was in the right place at the time of blazing over an empty net, the heroic scriptures written about how Capello finally picked the best set of XI against Bulgaria would have been burnt. Problem with a lacklustre 1-0 is that they have been tarnished in the least. This fact not being helped by their dismal record at Wembley, where they have managed just one victory in more than a year. Capello needs to find out what is going wrong and with only one more tournament to go before the tabloids start sprinkling their back pages with their typical word-play and criticism, time is short for the Italian.If you look at the Spanish team, who are now in a golden era of their own, their coach allows the players to play a very similar role to the one they play at their clubs. One might argue how the team is made up mainly of Barcelona and Real Madrid players, but then even England are made up of players from three or four clubs. Not that either of those is a reason why a team should perform well or not. The young boys were also beaten by the Spanish in the recently folded U-21 Championships, and the technical difference was too good to go unnoticed. I have heard the optimistic fan say that European players are more technically gifted than the English, but that again is no excuse because technique is developed while coaching players at a very early stage and not all the XI players in a world-class team can be co-incidentally termed as "gifted".It is a known fact already that the Dutch and Spanish, the current top teams in the world, train their players for a lot more hours than in England. For a nation as small as the Netherlands, they have a remarkable record of producing some stunning talent, pairing the number of hours of technical training with more coaches per player than any other nation in Europe. The amount of detail that goes into coaching a Dutch player is remarkable, with their training programmes looking more like a science experiment than a timetable. And then, of course, goes the saying, “We’d rather lose than win by playing ugly and that is why we’ve never been world champions.” Nigel de Jong, of course, is an exception.All the European leagues, apart from the English and the Portuguese leagues, have a winter break. Raised with fans across the nation, it usually receives a negative response, with watching football during the festive season seen as part of tradition. But it is a drab argument that, because a winter break would still mean having Boxing Day and New Year games and then the break for about 18-20 days. Players might be paid a truckload of cash to sit and do nothing at times, but the international team, which goes to major tournaments, usually consists of players who clock more than 50 games a season. An ideal example of what happens after that? Follow Jack Wilshere on Twitter and you shall know.Whether it is grassroots level training or a winter break, what Capello must say in his next team-talk should be, “Go out and play the way you like lads.” Positional ability is gained after hours of playing in that area of the pitch for that club and adjusting should actually be easy if you are a world-class player, but with England, it just does not seem to tick. What is needed is some more time at international duty, training in a particular style in their nation’s colours rather than meeting up once in a blue moon and playing a style which is completely different than at their clubs.An ironman like Capello was much needed after the weak handling of Sven Goran Eriksson and Steve McClaren, but humans react like springs. Too much pressure when relieved off them, they react, bouncing about in odd directions without any guidance. Team England, it seems, are just doing that.