Steve McClaren May Join Grady Little

I first saw the announcement in Bel is Thinking.

England out of Euro 2008

I got more details from swissinfo:

England have failed to qualify for the European football championship, co-hosted by Switzerland and Austria next June.

The English said lost 3-2 to Croatia at home in their last match of the qualifying round. Russia, Sweden, Portugal and Turkey clinched the remaining places at the Euro 2008 finals.

Soccerlens has more:

The dissection can be spared for tomorrow morning (honestly, nothing new to be said, England haven’t learned from their mistakes). Croatia, to a man, played well and did their job.

England had Richards, Lescott and Campbell and SWP do well, but to be honest the midfield was horrible, and Crouch, who deserves a lot of credit for his goal, was pushed off the ball too easily too many times and couldn’t outjump his markers.

And some think McClaren is to blame:

There was an expectant atmosphere inside Wembley following the life-line thrown to England by Israel after their win over Russia on Saturday.

But all that changed after eight minutes when a glaring error by 22-year-old keeper Scott Carson handed Croatia the lead on a pitch left partly waterlogged by a torrential pre-match downpour.

Niko Kranjcar tried his luck on the unpredictable surface with a speculative 25-yard effort and Aston Villa’s Carson allowed the dipping drive to bounce in front of him and skid into the net.

Carson was surprisingly thrown into the deep end by McClaren in place of regular keeper Paul Robinson having only made his debut in last Friday’s friendly international in Austria.

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