5 September 2007
The Problem With England
The ‘Golden Generation’ has lost it lustre, an injury hit and work-shy team are struggling to qualify for the next major championships. I for one spend most of England’s matches these days either having a doze in the second half, on the Internet half listening to irate commentary on the radio or secretly hoping for the opposition to win in order to expedite a change of management. How has it got to such a stage where not only is there almost no pride in our national team but that the overwhelming emotion it inspires is one of apathy? Where is the pulse-racing, fist-clenching, all-consuming fever when England are playing? When was the last time you knew the kick off time a week in advance? When did you last look at the team sheet and say, “I can’t wait to see what he does in the shirt”. When was the last time your happiness was entirely dictated by what our 11 best footballers do in the name of their country?
In short, what the hell has happened to England? (please note, this article is extremely long)
It is far from an onerous task to suggest reasons for the continual and continuing disappointment in the national team; players not good enough to meet the huge expectation, too many foreign players stifling home-grown players, too many foreign managers stifling home-grown managers, clueless national coach, clueless Football Association, Max Clifford, sadistic (and technically masochistic) press, too much money, no defensive midfielder, Gerrard and Lampard cannot play together, McLaren and Venables cannot coach together, Beckham is useless, Owen never fit, Rooney has a broken foot, Robinson/James/Martyn/Seaman concede freak goals, club versus country, playing players out of position, picking the wrong players, poor captain, bad karma and finally, penalty shoot-outs.
I think that is about it, some seemingly valid, some less so. No doubt a few have been missed or verge on the fictitious but it is this writers contention that they are all largely irrelevant.
Of great relevance however is how the team is picked.
Let me pose a question to the reader,
Who is the best English defender in the Premiership?
Convention would say John Terry is. He is the captain and most influential player in the league’s best defensive team. He has Champions League experience and has won many trophies. As a player he is strong, good in the air, strong in the tackle and his worth to Chelsea is evident most when he is either missing or unfit.
In short, Terry is the best English defender in the most successful club of recent times. Ergo, he is the best English defender.
Convention might also say that Jamie Carragher is the best English defender. He is also strong, good in the air and probably has the edge over Terry in anticipation. He has even more experience in the Champions League having been in the final twice, winning it once.
Carragher then, is the best English defender in the most successful Champions League team of recent times. Ergo he is the best English defender.
Certainly, most people would name one or other of these players, probably Terry because he is also the England captain. Few people would name Rio Ferdinand, a player with more pace than either, greater agility, better reading of the game, good passing and huge Champions League experience. Fewer still would say Ledley King, a player with more pace than any of them, brilliant reading of the game,composure, agility, determination, concentration and whose raw skill as a footballer is practically in a different league to even Ferdinand (even with Berbatov, the players and management at Tottenham all say that King is the best footballer at the club).
Carragher though has recently announced his retirement from the national team citing his continually being played out of position.
Terry, nominated captain of his country ahead of Steven Gerrard almost solely on his club reputation never had a good game for England before his captaincy and scarcely has since, yet how many people would contend that he is not worth his place in the team?
The assumption of the international quality of these two players is central to a single, common-held misconception at the root of the England team’s problems. The first is amongst supporters, pundits and sports writers that if you are an established, quality Champions League player, you are automatically capable of being a quality International player. On the face of it this makes perfect sense; the finest footballers and coaches on the planet congregate in this competition therefore if you shine on the Champions League stage, you are rightly hailed as one of the best players in the world. Many believe - rightly so - that the quality of the football played and the quality of opposition you play against, is greater in the Champions League than it is even in the World Cup. What people do not seem to appreciate however is that International football, while possessing a lower concentration of quality footballers in any given game poses different questions of a footballer than that of club football.
International football requires different qualities to those required in the Champions League
First, there is no comfort level in an international team. At a club, you train almost every day, have close friends, know the coaches well and benefit greatly from a stable, professional, team-orientated atmosphere. In the International squad you are primarily there by yourself. Every player there is present because of their own personal performance (theoretically). There is no reason why a club player should find it hard to adapt to this but nevertheless it is a completely different social environment environment to try and be comfortable with.
Second, in an international squad they play with people they rarely play or train with. This is obvious but highly relevant. All through a team there are small partnerships that require close relationships and a mutual understand and anticipation of each others strengths, weaknesses and decision making; centreback pairing, flank pairings, striker pairing, central midfield, goalkeeper and defenders and most importantly of all, player and manager. This is not just the more logical pairing of complimentary attributes such as a fast, reading defender with a strong aerial, slower defender or never play two attacking central midfielders in a 442 but more the mental aspect of how fast an individual player can assimilate instructions and gain a full appreciation of their partners abilities and anticipate their decision making - again a skill that is not required in club football.
Some players seem to do this quite easily and make the transition to international team play easily (think Rio Ferdinand, Teddy Sheringham, Ledley King, Micah Richards) and others seem to find it much harder to bring their club form to England (Jon Terry, Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, Matthew Le Tissier). It might even be suggested that the more regimented a club and the longer a player has been at that club, the harder it might be for them to adapt to an alternative style and system. Note how neither Lampard nor Gerrard seem capable of producing their best football away from their narrow, favoured position.
Finally, and most importantly of all, playing for your club is nothing like playing for England. At home you play in front of 90,000 fans of which at least 85,000 scream their support for you. Away from home there are often thousands of fans who have paid their hard earned money to support you - England’s away support is truly remarkable - and every team you play against sees the game as one of the most important of their lives. What player doesn’t raise their game in an effort to beat the country who invented the sport? But more than anything, when you play for your club, you play for a few hundred thousand distributed fans in England, a few million distributed around the world if you are particularly well supported. More over, you are hated by all of your rivals and every opposition fan in attendance.
When you play for England you carry the expectation, will and honour of 40 million of your people.
There is simply no comparison. If you play in the Champions League final, you may be seen by a billion people but supported by an insignificant fraction. If you lose, you have next year to try and make amends. If you win, you gain the adoration of your supporters and the envy of all others.
If you play in a World Cup, you are seen by the whole world. If you lose you will more than likely never get another chance and if you do, you will be four years older. If you win, you become a national legend looked up to by every peer in the game and respected by every fan. 40 million people will remember your efforts until the day they die and countless unborn millions will hear of your deeds until long after you have died. That and a Knighthood of course.
Playing for England should be the greatest honour that a footballer can have bestowed on him. It should contain a silent, solemn vow to fight as if they are the fan who spends their whole life dreaming of playing for England.
Playing for the contemporary England team is a right for a Liverpool player, a forgettable dream for a Bolton player a motivating factor for changing club for others and for some, an annoyance.
This is an absurd state of affairs.
The Champions League/International misconception extends to one held by supporters, pundits, writers and players that if you play for a Champions League club, you are a Champions League quality player (and by extension with the main misconception, good enough to be an International player). Just ask Jermaine Pennant who is mystified as to why he has yet to be given his chance at international level (the clue is in how many goals you scored last season, Jermaine).
Think of how many players have got into the England team on reputation alone (Phil Neville, Wes Brown, Jermaine Jenas), remain in the team on reputation (Frank Lampard, Jon Terry, Paul Robinson, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney - yes Rooney - Paul Scholes before he retired, Alan Shearer before he learned how to score) and how many players who surely merited a chance have never received it or had it taken away (Kevin Nolan, Ledley King after we lost to France, Darius Vassell after his first bad performance, Joey Barton, Scott Parker).
If we pick players based on a reputation earned in a competition which has little relevance to the football they will be playing, while spurning players who merit a chance because they have no experience in this over-relevant competition, the entire rationale for international selection becomes a mystery.
Take Kevin Nolan who a couple of seasons ago as Bolton’s captain, driving force and midfield goalscorer was having a breakthrough season. If he was in a Champions League team he would have been talk about in similar terms to Steven Gerrard. However plying his trade at Bolton, he never even got his chance in the England squad. What did this tell Nolan and the English players he played with and against? It said that no matter how well you play for your club, unless are playing Champions League or for a more fashionable team (e.g. Tottenham) you simply cannot hope to represent your country.
Not only does this completely eliminate the merit-based selection policy but it also tells every English player that if they have ambitions to play for their country (which of course they all do) they have to leave their club in order to fulfil them. Consequence? Only Champions League teams can hope to build their youth system into a competing and ultimately winning club side. How is that good for English football when the most promising youngsters take it for granted that they cannot achieve their ambitions outside the top four teams in the country?
Wayne Rooney, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Scott Parker, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Darren Bent, Jermaine Defoe, Jermaine Pennant, Michael Carrick, Frank Lampard - the list goes on and on. How fair is it that the combination of a superb academy and natural talent at West Ham benefits only Manchester United and Chelsea? The long-held inflated importance of the Champions League on a players ability it at least partly to blame for this.
I am not saying that players like Jon Terry and Frank Lampard should not play for their country per se or be excluded from the squad but there needs to be a much clearer, fairer rationale as to how the England squad and team operates. One that ingrains in every Englishman the certainty that their performance alone dictates the number of caps that they earn. That every game you play for your country is both a precious opportunity and a solemn responsibility.
Play well for your club, get a chance in the squad.
Play well in the squad, get a chance in the team.
Play well in the team, get a chance in the next game.
Play poorly in the team, lose the chance to someone else.
Keep spurning your chances and lose your place in the squad.
Players often talk about being only as good as your last game. I assure you this is a catchphrase learned by wrote aged 16 in a club media-relations lecture. They literally have no concept of what it means. Give their nearest, hungriest, in-form rival their shirt should they perform less than adequately however and I’m betting that they will soon learn the meaning.
Better still, make this selection an iron-clad policy with no exceptions and it removes any resentment of management or team mates - it becomes the logical consequence of their own performance. Lose the shirt and you can have no one else but yourself to blame.
There are other consequences of such a policy. Note how it solves the problem of uncompetitive friendlies (whose only value is in the money taken from the fans). If a player does not try in a friendly, they give up the shirt to someone else who is under no illusions that unless they give it everything and play well, they may never get another chance. The result? Everyone tries their absolute hardest every time they are fortunate enough to wear the shirt.
Club versus country? Put the pressure on the player and the club - right where it should be. If a player decides they have a slight niggle and withdraws from the squad for a friendly, another player gets his chance and if he takes it, the player who showed something less than complete commitment to his country loses out. Use this rationale and Steven Gerrard would not start the next England match and be left in no doubt as to how hard he would have to work to win his place back. Not only that but Frank Lampard will realise he has to score practically every match to keep his place.
In essence, this is what McLaren did to David Beckham (albeit for the wrong reasons and using public opinion to justify the original omission). Beckham, like the consummate professional he is, returned with vigour and proved his worth. The above policy removes any need for excuses for exclusion and puts the pressure to perform on every player every match because their selection or deselection is the logical result of only their performance.
Paul Robinson learns immediately that what he needs to regain his form is hard work and the taste of failure, not a thousand pats on the back from his adoring club fans or voices of support from David James, Steve McLaren and Bob Wilson.
Michael Owen discovers that his place in the squad is based on merit and fitness and not the England team’s desperation.
Lampard and Gerrard fight each other for the single place in the midfield ensuring that whoever plays knows that they have to perform at least as well as they do for their respective clubs.
Jon Terry is never handed the captaincy and still has to prove he is worth a place in the starting eleven.
Jamie Carragher learns that either he is good enough for England and plays, or not good enough and comes to terms with his place in the squad.
Ledley King learns that he is an international class centreback and that he can fulfil his greatest ambitions at a club who do not play in the Champions League rather than be dropped for a player who has still not proven himself at the international level.
Rio Ferdinand ends the criticisms of his being lazy by posing the question, “and when did I last fail to perform for England?”
Managers talk about taking the pressure off players; why on earth would they want to do that? What value is a player who has been shielded from pressure and expectation? If I am ever fortunate enough to see England contest a World Cup semi final I want to be absolutely sure that these are men who have experienced and thrived in pressure before. What is more, I also want a squad shorn of those players who have proven themselves incapable of handling International pressure.
Finally, more importantly than anything else, the England fans get to see a team that embodies their own passion and yearning. A team who fights every minute they are on the pitch for each other, the legion of fans who would give everything they will ever own for the single chance that they took and more above all, for glory of their country.
Most importantly of all, such an intransigent, harsh policy would quickly and fairly weed out those who are not mentally equipped to handle the extreme pressure and expectation of international football and those who are unable to shoulder the hopes and delirious dreams of 40 million desperately starved supporters.
So England head into a sequence of games that will determine their qualification for the next major championships. And they might well qualify such is the individual quality that sporadically flickers into light.
All the while there are dozens of other players out there who have seen their chance pass them by or harbour a small knot of hurt from the chance that never - but should have - come their way. They spend their whole careers looking up at the Champions league and the England coupon that comes with it.
Great England careers and great England teams now pass us by because the team is no longer picked on merit but on reputation.
We may qualify for Euro 2008 and we may not but until someone recognises the rotten heart at the centre of the English game, those great careers and teams will never be more than unfulfilled potential and lost generations.
