Ok fair enough give me more example of players lighting up the world cup that play in the premiership. I'm not saying it's the only reason but another I can think is playing reasonable is Tevez, he only played (probably not started) 35 games last year for City.
That has to help come the end of the season, Rooney had likely played more than that by the time he got injured in march wasn't it?
Tevez has started 44 games in the past year and been a sub in 7 more, scoring 30 with 9 assists in the process, thats City and Argentina.
Wayne Rooney started 50 games and made 2 sub appearances, but people very often say how bad players look largely from tiredness from long traveling, Tevez traveled far further for international games. ITs pretty much a wash,
Messi STARTED 56 games and was a sub in 6 more, so has played 10 whole games more than Rooney. Mascherano has started 49 games with 4 sub appearances.
Muller whose been superb in the World cup started 46, with 6 sub appearances.
Lucio started 49 games, isn't the oldest, but is fairly old and finished the season later than most with the CL final.
Tiredness is a COMPLETE excuse, and something english fans shouldn't be looking for, we constantly look for a manufactured excuse, change something around and still fail.
The team was simply not right, it had no balance because the selection was completely wrong, again. We didn't play significantly better against Slovenia(if we did how would that be explained, tired players get better the more games they played?), we played a different quality team who played a different game. The USA have some quality and got at us, it caused us problems, Algeria have no quality, but do have pace and running in abundance and that caused us to be pegged back and play like crap, Slovenia sat back and offered no problems at all, THATS the reason we played better.
Thats also the reason we looked better in qualifiers, playing much worse teams who play for a draw doesnt' test us, the same problems evident at the world cup were evident in qualifiers and friendlies over the past decade let alone the past 2 years and we play the same way in the first friendly/qualifier of the year a week or two into the season.
Tiredness is nothing but an excuse, for a half dozen tournaments in a row we've picked the most popular players rather than a balanced team and thats cost us every single time by being unable to play proper team football, the fix is easy and obvious and we need a manager willing to drop names like Gerrard, Terry, and simply not pick people like Johnson. Until a manager ignores the FA and press and picks the team he wants rather than the one they choose for him, we'll fail miserably, and the more we buy into these manufactured excuses the less reason the FA have to change their methods because they just push the blame onto someone else and try the same tired formula with a new manager/scapegoat.
