Woodward: How England Can Win World Cup

Filed in archive England on April 4, 2006

source: espnstar.com

In the May issue of FourFourTwo magazine Sir Clive Woodward is telling Sven how to do his job. "England have gone out of their last two tournaments because they wanted to defend the lead," says Woodward. "It's interesting
to me that the Brazilian mindset is to go out and attack and they
have had the greatest success in World Cups. There's surely a
correlation there ... When you're playing for
your lives you have to make the right decisions at the right time,
the whole tournament can come down to getting the smallest detail
right. Get it wrong and you're out."

Sir Clive has won the World Cup himself, but it was the Rugby World Cup not the real one, and if I remember rightly he achieved that feat playing some pretty defensive rugby that relied on Johnny Wilkinson's accuracy.

Woodward has a point though. If England take the lead against one of the dangerous teams this summer they just need to have the confidence to believe they deserve that lead and not retreat and play timidly.