• World Cup

Capello right to axe Walcott

Theo Walcott has not done enough to impress Fabio Capello © Getty Images

Enlarge

Related Links

• News: Messi stunned by Walcott axe
  
• News: Dumped Walcott stunned by axe
  

The names of some players are indelibly linked with the World Cup - Diego Maradona, Pele and Ronaldo for example. For all the wrong reasons, it appears Theo Walcott may join that list after his exclusion from Fabio Capello's 23-man squad was met with as much disbelief and bemusement as his inclusion four years ago. But it is a decision that should have surprised nobody.

The publication of Capello's final selection contained a couple of surprises - with Stephen Warnock getting the nod ahead of Leighton Baines - but it was the Italian's phone call to Walcott, made while the young winger was on the golf course, that demanded immediate attention. The shy teenager that gatecrashed the party in 2006 has become the young man heartbroken by rejection.

During the finals in Germany, Sven-Goran Eriksson decided against using a player who had not made a senior appearance for Arsenal so Walcott occupied himself by documenting his experience on a hand-held video camera. When this year's tournament gets underway in South Africa, it will be the medium of television through which he experiences the World Cup.

Really, he can have few complaints. His display in the recent friendly victory over Mexico was an archetypal Walcott performance. Though his pace is undoubtedly a weapon, all too often he is unaware of how best to use the ball, and his final product is not of international standard at present.

For a winger, his crossing and passing leaves a lot to be desired and the frustration on Wayne Rooney's face was clear at Wembley when Walcott found himself unable to pick out the striker in the box on multiple occasions. For a player with such pace, he suffers from a head-down style and actually struggles to beat his man. Opta's Twitter feed, always quick off the mark, posted the illuminating stat on Tuesday that in completing just 34% of his dribbles, only William Gallas had a poorer success rate at Arsenal this season.

It should be noted in mitigation that he has suffered extensively from injuries, but at this stage in his career, Walcott is a player living off sporadic flashes of brilliance: his searing run and assist for Emmanuel Adebayor against Liverpool in 2008, his impact as a substitute and goal against Barcelona this season and, most importantly for England, that hat-trick against Croatia in Zagreb which appeared to herald the arrival of a new star for the national side.

But Walcott has not shown palpable signs of real improvement since then. That was a criticism made of the player by former England winger Chris Waddle in a detailed dissection of the player's faults in March. It is worth revisiting Waddle's critique, as three months on, it looks a perceptive and important one.

David Beckham was another play to suffer World Cup heartache © Getty Images

Enlarge

"People keep saying he's young but Wayne Rooney understood the game at 16, 17," Waddle said. "I've never seen any difference in Walcott since he was at Southampton and broke into the team at a very young age. I've never seen him develop. He just doesn't understand the game for me - where to be running, when to run inside a full back, when to just play a one-two. It's all off the cuff. I just don't think he's got a football brain and he's going to have problems. I just don't know whether he studies the game, learns the game, or what. He's at a great club where they play fantastic football week-in, week-out, and I'm just surprised he's never developed his game."

Waddle's criticism came after a 3-1 win over Egypt in which Shaun Wright-Phillips replaced the Arsenal man and promptly scored the second before setting up the third. Perhaps that cameo was in Capello's mind when he included Wright-Phillips in his squad on Tuesday. To this observer, Adam Johnson would have been a better choice to deputise for the superior Aaron Lennon, given his success in keeping his rival out of the Manchester City team and abundant promise shown since joining the club but, either way, Walcott did not deserve to go. He didn't four years ago either.

This is not an attempt to criticise Walcott as a person, or to kick him while he is down. Indeed, he seems like a genuinely nice, down-to-earth man which is perhaps a scarce commodity in football at present. The simple fact is that he is underdeveloped as a footballer.

That much was proved when Walcott recently revealed how David Beckham, himself sidelined in such painful circumstances by injury, had been coaching him on the art of crossing. "David has always told me to deliver the ball into space and if there is no one there, it is not your problem," Walcott said. "You just need to put the ball into space and someone should get on the end of it."

Unfortunately for Walcott, his failure to pick out team-mates on a regular enough basis is most definitely his problem. Perhaps Beckham will now coach him through the aching disappointment of missing out on the World Cup.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.