How Russia journey could benefit Lions for years to come
ENGLAND are out of the World Cup but they have transformed the image and standing of the national team during their four-week campaign in Russia. They are the first England team to overachieve in living memory and have transformed the national feeling around the side.
In doing so, England have proven four important points about themselves and the broader context.
So many English tournament defeats end with serious soul-searching about the state of football. This tournament was the first reassertion of a new English football identity, one that trusted English players to play in a new way, one delivered by an English coach.
Seeing unglamorous English players playing like this could encourage Premier League teams to trust their youngsters. Southgate said he hoped clubs would start to recognise what English players can do.
“They should have belief in some of the guys who have come in, not from nowhere, but have not had five or six years at top clubs,” Southgate said. “They have had very quick journeys, the likes of Harry Maguire, Jordan Pickford and Kieran Trippier (below).”
And Southgate himself is crucial too. It has been a difficult time for English coaches, especially with England twice choosing a foreign manager, Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, in an attempt to drag the team into line with the rest of the world. Looking back, those two only exacerbated the identity crisis. But this summer Southgate feels as if he has proved a point about what English coaches can do.
“We felt it was the chance to showcase what young English players can do, and also we hoped that we could strike a blow for English coaches as well,” Southgate said. “It is an honour to do it, and to play in a way and get to a stage of a tournament that will hopefully inspire young coaches as well. I know the messages I have had from back home has helped them see what’s possible.”
Remember when even some of England’s best players, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole, would get booed at Wembley?
For years there has been a gradual disconnection between the England team and the public. Even though Wembley would sell out for home games, the sense of love between the fans and team had eroded away. It felt as if the power of the Premier League meant that fans would always identify more now with club sides.
But this summer blew all of that conventional wisdom away. Southgate explained the power of the players realising the public were behind them.
“The desire and hunger of the players will be there to do it,” he said. It’s great for them, they may have had a feeling that playing for England was always misery and regret and recrimination. Now they’ve seen it can be enjoyable.”
Positivity has been at the heart of Gareth Southgate’s England. When Harry Maguire made his England debut against Lithuania last year, he told Southgate afterwards he was pleased not to have made any mistakes. Southgate told him to focus on how good he could be instead. England have taken that mentality into this World Cup and Southgate believes that has been central to everything they have achieved. “I think they’ve had a view of what is possible,” he said, drawing a contrast to Euro ‘96 and France ‘98. “They were my experiences of my first couple of tournaments with England. It was difficult to watch guys avoiding mistakes for a long period. Whereas for the majority of this tournament we’ve tried to be as good as we can be.”
The fact that England went into a tournament without fear of failure was evident. They played as if freed from the burdens of history. They just lost to a better team.
Whether this was England’s best ever chance to win a World Cup will be debated for years, and who knows what will happen at Euro 2020. But the feeling is that England have to keep moving forward. Southgate raised the comparison with Germany, whose young team lost the World Cup semis in 2010 before winning the competition in 2014.
“This is either a moment of rare hope and we sink bank, or we build in the way that Germany did in 2010,” Southgate said. “We want to be in semi-finals, finals and we’ve shown to ourselves that can happen.”
Harry Kane was just as optimistic.
“This has got to be the start of something rather than the end of it,” he said. “When you look at our squad, how young it is and the fact the manager has only been in charge for two years, it is massive that we have had a good tournament, restored the pride of the nation, the fans are excited to watch us again and that is how we have to keep it. The way to do that is to carry on progressing.”