Bill Bridge: Chances are we need to get used to the idea of suffering further tedium

In days gone by, playing for your country was the ultimate honour; pulling on the white shirt was the pinnacle of many careers and there was rarely a lack of enthusiasm for the task in hand when men like Bobby Moore, Duncan Edwards, Jimmy Armfield, Nat Lofthouse and so many others were at work.

Now it all seems so different and representing the land of your birth seems to lack the glamour (and financial rewards) associated these days with the Champions League and even the Premier League title itself.

But there is another malady eating away at the heart of the England team; it is the knowledge that Fabio Capello is heading for the door less than two years from now. He has told the Football Association he plans to retire after the European finals and the FA, perhaps in haste, declared in response that his successor would be an Englishman.

In the meantime the players are stuck with a man whose mind is elsewhere, playing a system they know will not win titles, even if it is just about good enough to qualify for finals. And they know, too, that when the time comes for Capello to go there is little chance of the new boy making sweeping alterations to tactics.

The reason for that? Simply there are not enough English managers with the quality to do the job and that there are no signs that the FA are aware of the shortfall.

The continued prevarication over the Burton-on-Trent project remains a condemnation of the FA's ability to plan ahead, just as the lack of football knowledge round the table when the chiefs of the English game gather is an indictment of the heads-in-the-sand approach of men like Sir David Richards.

Of all the men wearing FA blazers only one – Sir Trevor Brooking – has played the game at top level yet he is permanently sidelined, given little tasks to undertake without being trusted with any real power, the authority to fast-track young coaches into the Premier League for example.

So when the time comes for Fabio to say arrivederci we will be stuck in the same mire as when first Sven Goran Eriksson then Capello were thrust into the role of managing England. There will be homegrown candidates, led by Harry Redknapp (and hopefully not including "Big Sam" Allardyce who was memorably quoted last week as saying "I hate perception") but there will be no one to have the game bubbling with enthusiasm.

That is the state the English game is in and unless and until changes are made at the top of the domestic game we will have to suffer through many more evenings like last Tuesday; hubris is a terrible thing.

PERHAPS Wayne Rooney thinks he has something that Manchester United heroes like David Beckham, Roy Keane and Jaap Stam lacked but finding out is going to cost him and the club dearly unless something is done to clear the air at Old Trafford.

Rooney has not been playing well since last season and England's World Cup failure was laid – perhaps harshly – at his door. He has been in and out of Sir Alex Ferguson's team this season and has shown no sign of a return to form for club or country under the pressure of ongoing examinations of his personal life, especially his relationship with bride Coleen.

His pronouncement last week that he has not been injured during the early part of the season was a direct contradiction of Ferguson's insistence that his leading man was still troubled by the ankle problem suffered in the closing weeks of the last campaign. For Rooney, left, to openly challenge his manager was a throwing down of the gauntlet in a major way.

Beckham, Keane and Stam all took on Sir Alex and lost; it will be fascinating to see how the latest contender fares.

THEY were the most chaotic Games in living memory but Delhi's celebration of the Commonwealth thankfully ended without any serious incident.

Competitors endured plenty of Delhi Belly, less-than-adequate accommodation, farcical transport arrangements and poor crowds but the overall impression, transmitted by Dame Kelly Holmes, the president of Commonwealth Games England, was that the festival of sport had been a success with her team garnering one more gold and 32 more medals in total than their counterparts at the 2006 Games in Melbourne.

England's team in Australia was regarded as much stronger than that which travelled to India and there is no doubt that even more golds would have been won had world-class performers like Jessica Ennis, Phillips Idowu, Mo Farah, Beth Tweddle and Bradley Wiggins summoned the enthusiasm to travel to the sub-continent. Instead they chose to stay at home, some of them perhaps taking a little too much advice from their coaches, and look to the tests ahead, not least London 2012.

But Dame Kelly was spot on in her assessment of the absentees' approach. "A lot of them pulled out," she said, "making rash decisions because of the information that was out there, instead of having trust that we would be thinking of their interests first. Now that they see the medal table there will be a lot of athletes who regret not coming."

Those regrets will be deepened if, for whatever reason, some of those absentees do not make it to London.

and another thing...

MAYBE they were still slightly tipsy after the celebrations at Celtic Manor, perhaps they were intoxicated by the sight of so many from this side of the Atlantic in the world's top 20, but the rulers of European golf made a major statement of intent when they changed the qualification canvas for the next Ryder Cup.

For next season those Europeans like Justin Rose, Paul Casey, Ian Poulter, Padraig Harrington and – for the first time next year – Martin Kaymer who choose to spend most of their summers in the United States will have to play 13 tournaments on the European Tour, three of which must be in mainland Europe, to retain membership of the Tour and thus be eligible for the Ryder Cup.

Europe's Tour will never match the USA in terms of prize-money but the signs are that on every other front they are closing the gap.

And in another, less public, aspect, the European Tour are learning from their American friends; we now have politicians in the locker room to match any the Americans have with Thomas Bjorn emerging as a driving force and a certain future captain.