5 England World Cup Decisions That Should Haunt Roy Hodgson

England€™s first World Cup group stage exit since the 1958 tournament in Sweden has predictably lead to an extensive post-mortem analysis from the British media. Similar to the 2010 exit and many competitions after the nation€™s lone international triumph in 1966, the reasons for failure are being regurgitated from the past, along with some interesting new insinuations. Some of the old rationales include the lack of enough English players in the Premier League, the need for a winter break, a suggestion to copy the B-league system from other successful European nations, encourage more qualified coaches, better youth development and eradicate the obsession with having only one star player. On the back of this latest failure, some interesting new permutations have appeared: the Messiah complex by Jonathan Wilson of the Guardian, the Telegraph's Jonathan Liew's thoughts on market capitalism and the greedy club theory that includes the worrying proliferation of talented Englishmen happy to sit on the bench, as espoused by Darren Lewis of the Mirrror. All of the aforementioned points may have merit and need addressing if English football wants to see a different outcome to both Euro 2016 in France and the Russia 2018 World Cup, that much is obvious, but there is something more fundamentally flawed with the England set-up specifically, and not the wider game that must also be addressed. The most simple and obvious reasons for England's failure in Brazil was coach Roy Hodgson's tactical and squad choices: he failed to utilize the young players who shined in the Premier League, and he failed to play his available talents in their best positions. With that in mind, we're looking back at the 5 tactical and squad selection faux pas that came back to haunt Hodgson at the World Cup very quickly.