will not qualifiyin for the euro 2008 tournament benifit england in any way regarding WORLD CUP prep???

Answer 1

Not in and of itself.

On the one hand, not qualifying for Euro 2008 will allow English players to rest a little bit more this spring and summer. While England will play some friendlies during the spring, they will almost certainly play fewer friendlies than those that are needing to prepare for Euro 2008. Likewise, they won't have the six matches in a month that some of the teams at Euro 2008 will have. Since some of the major English players have been somewhat fragile, this rest might help have the team in better shape when qualifying starts.

On the other hand, the only way to figure out which young players can help the team and to fuse a team into a cohesive unit is actual meaningful matches. Missing out on Euro 2008 will mean hurt in that regard (though again, you are more likely to play young players if focusing on getting ready for World Cup qualifying than getting ready for Euro 2008).

The one way that it could significantly help is if England engages in a little self-examination of what has been going wrong in English soccer over the last decade. Clearly, the results of the team do not measure up to their perception of their talent level. Either there needs to be less ego or the new coaching staff needs to figure out how to get those egos to produce. Until we see the results on the field, I would not be optimistic that we will see changes to how England plays in World Cup qualifying. Clearly, the current system is inadequate to get to South Africa.