After every England tournament defeat the same list of excuses and reasons for failure are brought out, but are they all still relevant?
Talent Pool
Sturridge, Barkley, Shaw should be around for years to come |
Having more English players
in the PL would certainly help the
national team but no-one can deny that the first team posses quality. With
Daniel Sturridge, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley and
Luke Shaw, England possess a myriad of young talent.
Stagnation
It is also to the detriment
of the national talent pool that players like Scott Sinclair, Jack Rodwell,
Wilfred Zaha and Jack Butland have all chosen to sit on the bench of a big club
rather than continuing their development by playing regular football.
Recall the old guard
After the 2010 and 2012
tournaments there were many calls for the 'golden generation' of Rio Ferdinand,
John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole to be dropped so a new team could be
built. Yet after defeat this time there were many claiming Terry and Cole would
have been better choices. You can't have it both ways, Cole was dropped by his
club and Terry's off the field issues would have been an unwelcome presence in
the squad. Losing can be a vital experience for improvement and we don't need
to crucify players for the sake of it.
Coaching/The grassroots
game/Not enough English players
All three of these are
situations that could be vastly improved and discussion and developments in
these areas will no doubt help English football in the future. However these
problems are vastly overstated and probably don't affect the national team as
much as is made out.
For example the English
system is almost certainly better than those in Algeria , Costa Rica , Greece , Chile , Nigeria and the USA , all teams who have just qualified for the last 16
of the World Cup. And surely those teams would at least pick 7 or 8 of the
England XI over their own if they could.
The Premier League is
king
The argument that fans and
players care more about club allegiances certainly has weight. There is an
apathy towards none-tournament games from many fans and we've seen players like
Daniel Sturridge and Steven Gerrard pull out of friendlies before citing
'niggles' but most likely as an excuse to stay fresh for their clubs. With the
excitement of the PL and it global appeal England games don't seem as important as domestic action.
Fans from smaller countries see their national team's games as their chance to
shine on the big stage and watch a high level of football whereas the opposite
could be seen in England .
Negativity
Travelling fans stay positive |
I don't know when it became
cool to criticise England but sadly many fans only want to be negative. And our journalists and
newspapers seem relish failure so the can write scathing attacks. It's a sad
state of affairs that we can't unanimously back our country before a tournament
and the fear of humiliation in the national press after a defeat definitely
puts pressure on the players.
At the World Cup the power
of good-will and support from fans of Chile , Argentina , USA is quite evident and the positivity is certainly
felt by the players as shown in their celebrations and post-match quotes.
Technical Ability
This criticism that English
players lack technical ability is brought out after every England defeat, mostly by people who don't understand
football. Every single one of these players has played football since a very
young age, and they all play in the most skilful league in the world. If the England players were technically deficient they wouldn't be
playing for Man Utd, Chelsea , Arsenal and Liverpool .
Club Form
Which brings me onto the
point which I believe is the million dollar question. Why are England players so capable of brilliance for their clubs but
not for England ?
If you look at England 's starting line-up against Italy only Welbeck and Hart had come of the back of poor
seasons for their clubs. Lambert, Cahill, Sturridge, Gerrard and Sterling in particular had excellent campaigns for their clubs
but were unable to bring that form into the tournament.
There is no obvious answer
to this, most agreed with Hodgson's tactics and team selection and the spirit
of the group and preparations seemed to be good.
Finding an answer to this
question may be the key to unlocking England 's potential.