ANENDRA SINGH: When slow coaches stall in fast lane

The rigours of professional sport are so exacting that coaches must exercise deliberate selection and methodical preparation if they want their teams to reach the pinnacle of success.
The secret lies in a ruthless culling of players who exhibit individualism and promoting those who possess skills that help build a rapport on the field or court. In other words, as a coach you play the best players available, not "your" favourites.
The opportunity to juxtapose soccer with netball seldom arises but last week there were uncanny parallels between the Sting in the National Bank Cup netball play-offs and the England soccer team's demise in the 2006 Fifa Soccer World Cup in Germany.
Sting coach Robyn Broughton's selection raised eyebrows when, for reasons best known to her, she brought in Donna Loffhagen to replace an almost faultless Silver Fern Belinda Colling in the shooting circle during the third semifinal in Invercargill.
Loffhagen, who turned her back on netball to play basketball during this year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games, made a mockery of Broughton's selection policy with loopy shots to the hoop.
The Force buckled in the last quarter, not due to anything special from Loffhagen but through the vision and accuracy of Australian Natalie Avellino, who spent a considerable time on the bench.
What was Broughton thinking? She admitted after the semifinal that injecting Loffhagen was a risk but, in a stubborn fit, used her in the six-time champions' unsuccessful attempt to upstage the Magic in last Saturday's final at Mystery Creek, Hamilton.
Sting's Tania Dalton also was below par. The obvious pairing to start off should have been Avellino and Colling. Broughton should have ignored the past glories and reputations of players in naming her line-up.
Enter England's Swedish coach Sven-Goran Eriksson and his preposterous logic in taking players to Germany.
All the sorrys in the world can't explain why he took injured and undercooked players to the world's biggest sporting stage.
The fitness of strikers Michael Owen and a hotheaded, kick-you-in-the-unmentionables Wayne Rooney was always open to scrutiny.
While England skipper David Beckham has a respectable reputation in set-piece play, it was midfielder Aaron Lennon who left a brief, but lasting, impression when he ran on to the field to replace an injured Becks against Portugal in the quarterfinal last Sunday.
Lennon had the Portuguese defence in sixes and sevens and, dare I say it, given more game time he could have turned things around.
The minute he ran on the English seemed to have Portugal back-pedalling.
Okay, so he's 19 years old and has only single-digit number of caps for England compared with Beckham, who has close to 100 games under his belt, and fellow midfielders Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, who have both represented their countries close to 50 times.
What became of all that collective wisdom during the penalty shootout?
The English players' body language screamed of negativity. Did the English prepare for penalty kicks, considering it had become a feature of the tournament even as early as the second round?
Hosts Germany did their homework and it showed in their 4-2 penalty-kick quarterfinal victory against Argentina last Saturday.
The German think-tank had done an analysis of how each Argentine took penalties and duly informed their goalkeeper Jens Lehmann each time a player walked up.
"Before both our knockout games against Sweden and Argentina we gave Lehmann information on the possible penalty takers.
Lehmann saw videos of all the penalties Argentina have taken in the past two years, with a list of the specific types of shots the players usually take," team manager Oliver Bierhoff told the media.
Now that's the sort of preparation one would expect of any coach who commands a multi-million-pound salary.
Broughton, Eriksson and Brazilian coach Carlos Alberto Perrira could learn from that.
One can't help but agree with Karl Wald, the 90-year-old German who introduced penalty shoot-outs to soccer, for labelling the Swiss and English "complete losers".
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