YORK CITY manager Martin Foyle said he would be going “absolutely mad” with his defence had they made the same mistake as England did for the opening goal of their World Cup second round clash with Germany.

Foyle despaired at the Three Lions’ 4-1 humbling, describing it as a “major disappointment”.

But while he branded the decision which saw Frank Lampard’s “goal” not given “a disgrace”, he acknowledged Joachim Loew’s men dominated and deserved their chance against Argentina in the quarter-final.

Before the game, the City chief said the last 16 tie would come down to which team defended best, and he watched dumbfounded as Fabio Capello’s men made a catastrophic string of errors at the back.

“They were poor goals,” he said. “The first, if that happened at my level I would be absolutely going mad at them.

“You are trying to get a good line on the long kick and John Terry got caught five, six, seven yards out of place.

“Then he has run off Matthew Upson. To score straight through the middle, I don’t think I have ever scored like that through my professional career in League football.

“In international football, that was a big downer for the team.”

Foyle added: “It was a major disappointment. We built them up after the last qualifying game when they won 1-0. We thought we would take the Germans on and I thought they were so much better – organised, very hard to beat. We were 2-0 down and well and truly out of the game at that stage.

“I couldn’t see us getting back into it. Upson scored from a set-piece, which was pleasing to see, and then we get that controversial Frank Lampard goal.

“I think it’s a disgrace. It’s been going on for the last ten years. We could probably use that as an excuse, up to half-time anyway when the momentum was with us. I think the Germans would have gone in on a big downer.”

Foyle, a friend of former England boss Steve McClaren, pinpointed a predominance of foreign players in the Premier League as one of the reasons for England’s downfall – and reckons the nation will never succeed at major tournaments until that imbalance is corrected.

“I go back to Steve McClaren, who is a good friend of mine,” he said. “He said there weren’t enough English players playing enough football and that there were too many foreigners in the Premier League.

“He’s absolutely 100 per cent right. Italy have so many numbers, Germany do, so why don’t we? We’re doing so many things wrong and we could be right at the top at certain levels.

“If the football’s not right, the players aren’t coming through. McClaren said he didn’t have the players long enough to work with them. It’s what has been said ten years ago and, until England do something about it, it won’t ever change for me.”