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German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer watches as Frank Lampard's shot bounces behind the line
The German goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, watches as Frank Lampard’s shot bounces behind the line. Photograph: Joern Pollex/Getty Images Photograph: Gero Breloer/AP
The German goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, watches as Frank Lampard’s shot bounces behind the line. Photograph: Joern Pollex/Getty Images Photograph: Gero Breloer/AP

World Cup 2010: Echoes of '66 - but it's all over for England's golden generation

This article is more than 13 years old
Controversy surrounds Frank Lampard's would-be goal as England crash to 4-1 defeat against Germany in second round

One of the most controversial moments of England's football history came back to bite the players of the present generation tonight as they were eliminated from the 2010 World Cup after losing 4-1 to Germany in the second round.

Trailing by two goals to one towards the end of the first half, a chance to draw level was denied when Frank Lampard's shot cannoned down off the underside of the German crossbar and landed a couple of feet behind the goal-line before bouncing back up, hitting the bar again and spinning into the goalkeeper's arms. The linesman, Mauricio Espinosa of Uruguay, gave no sign that the ball had crossed the line, and play was waved on by the referee, his compatriot Jorge Larrionda.

Forty-four years ago, when England and Germany were still level at 2-2 in extra time in a World Cup final, Geoff Hurst was awarded a goal for a similar effort. The Germans have always claimed that the whole of the ball was not over the line, as the game's laws stipulate, and generations of scientific advances – including satellite technology – have been annexed in an attempt to clarify the matter, which has never been definitively settled.

That fateful decision, which prefaced England's 4-2 victory, was taken by a linesman from Azerbaijan, one Tofik Bakhramov, a distinguished official who died in 1993 and whose statue stands today in Baku. If Germany go on to win this tournament, there may one day be a statue of Espinosa in Berlin. After the England fans in today's 40,510 crowd had seen a replay of the incident on the stadium's large screens, the incessant blare of the vuvuzelas was drowned by a familiar and unflattering Anglo-Saxon chant directed at the referee.

Not that England could claim to have deserved any other result. Germany came to South Africa with their youngest squad since the 1930s and their play was full of freshness, verve and mutual understanding – all the things their opponents, despite their greater experience, have been lacking for years. The supposedly lucky red strip counted for nothing as England's representatives were caught flat-footed time and again by players who moved between them like white-clad dancers.

At the end Wayne Rooney trudged off with the shirt belonging to Thomas Müller, the scorer of two of Germany's goals and the recipient of the official man of the match award. Müller will not be 21 until September, and like several other team members he could be found this time last year in the team that trounced England 4-0 in the European under-21 championships.

How Rooney must be wishing he were 20 again, still with the bloom of youth upon him. He was expected to be one of the tournament's superstars, along with the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but no other player from any country has performed so far below his known abilities over the past fortnight.

At 24 he has looked and played throughout England's matches like a man 10 years older, weighed down by the strain of a long domestic season and possibly hampered by an incomplete recovery from an ankle injury suffered in the service of Manchester United in March. Not only did a man who scored 34 times for his club last season fail to manage a single goal, only once did he even come close.

At least Rooney, perhaps in a less war-weary condition, will be back in England's colours in an attempt to qualify for 2014. The same cannot be said for Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and the remainder of England's so-called golden generation, now in their 30s and, as could be seen tonight, well past their best-before dates. The quarter-final appearances under Sven-Göran Eriksson in two previous World Cups and one European championship in Portugal will now be seen as the pinnacle of their collective achievement.

Not even the austere regime of Fabio Capello, their £6m-a-year Italian super-coach, and the battalion of his co-nationals brought in to assist him could manage to overcome the squad's inability to live up to their reputations in a tournament. After spending about £20m over the past two and a half years on this project, and having agreed, shortly before the tournament, to remove a clause that would have allowed them to part company with Capello relatively cheaply, the FA now faces the prospect of giving him £12m to go away, unless he leaves of his own volition.

Tonight Capello said that he would be meeting Sir Dave Richards, a senior member of the FA, tomorrow to discuss his future. Asked if he would be resigning, he replied: "Absolutely not. We have to wait. I want to talk with the chairman and see if he has confidence in me. I have to think about everything." Invited to deliver a self-assessment, he said: "When you lose, the performance of the manager is not good."

But there was little dignity in his insistence on blaming the referee for England's failure to make further progress. "The game would have been very different with that goal," he said. "It's incredible." He agreed that his players had failed to match their opponents' speed. "But I'm sure that a big mistake from the referee was too important for us to get past."

Müller's shirt was all England will carry away from the whole mishandled adventure, apart from a deep sense of disillusionment which may linger for some time. The size of the crowd at their next fixture – a historically resonant friendly against Hungary at Wembley on 11 August – is likely to be as worrying for the heavily indebted FA as the identity of Capello's successor. But the Germans, it must be said, really were terrific.

More on this story

More on this story

  • World Cup 2010: Harry Redknapp keen to be next England manager

  • World Cup 2010: England v Germany front pages

  • World Cup 2010: Fabio Capello set to clarify England future

  • World Cup 2010 blog: 28 June

  • World Cup 2010: Five reasons why England were embarrassed by Germany

  • World Cup 2010: Germany tear down England's defence

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