With these kids we can learn to love England again
When Brian Kidd joined Manchester United in 1988, one of the first games he watched involved a very young Ryan Giggs. Sir Alex Ferguson was already well aware of the boy rising through the United ranks. ‘And if we can’t make this one a player,’ he told Kidd, ‘ we should pack it in.’
Much the same might be said of the talent now emerging through england’s age-group teams. the Under 20s won the World Cup this year, the Under 19s won the european Championship, a second- string Under 20 squad emerged victorious from the highly regarded toulon tournament and now Steve Cooper’s Under 17s are in another World Cup final against Spain, having outplayed Brazil to win 3-1 in the last four.
If we cannot turn this lot into a special senior team, there really is something wrong with english football.
Just watching Phil Foden of Manchester City lift his head and play as four Brazilians attempted unsuccessfully to close him down was to imagine an england team that would no longer be viewed as uninspiring, undeserving, a blot on the landscape, interrupting the Premier League season to the delight of no one.
We think we have fallen out of love with international football. We haven’t. A successful, or merely exciting, england team still have the power to move the nation. It is mediocrity that tires us, england teams who progress because it is almost impossible not to, then make little impact once there.
england’s age-group teams are thriving in tight, elite, competitions: 24 teams at the Under 17 and Under 20 World Cups, just eight at the Under 19 european Championship. the big games come early and are intense.
holland and Germany at the group stage in the european Championship, Argentina in the group stage of the Under 20 World Cup, Brazil and Italy in World Cup semi-finals, Portugal in the final of the european Championship. It was 1966 when england’s senior team last defeated what might be termed a major nation at the knockout stage of an international tournament.
the teenagers are increasingly familiar with playing such countries as equals, so facing them five or 10 years from now should hold no fear. Providing these boys are allowed to develop.
nobody is saying the players who will face Spain in Kolkata tomorrow are ready for club
THE Carabao Cup quarter-final pitted the four strongest teams against the four weakest. Maybe that would explain the delay in making the draw — someone got burned by a ball.
promotion this minute. Cooper’s starting XI against Brazil had three from Manchester City, four from Chelsea and one each from Liverpool and tottenham. We all know opportunities at that level are limited, but not unthinkable.
Giggs was three months past his 17th birthday when he made his debut for Manchester United. harry Winks is becoming a regular at tottenham at the age of 21. It is between those stages, in the late teenage years, that english youth seems to lose its way, when all that promise stagnates.
At the 2010 Under 17 european Championship, which england won, Saul niguez, now a key influence at Atletico Madrid, could not get a game. Meanwhile, Josh Mceachran made the technical team of the tournament in midfield. he was doing well at Chelsea, and was well liked by Carlo Ancelotti, but the coach was sacked after failing to retain the title, and the young players he favoured went back to square one. Unsurprisingly, few Chelsea managers wish to gamble their lot on youth and Mceachran is now at Brentford.
england’s senior team have capped two players from that squad: Jack Butland and Ross Barkley. neither are regulars.
not that this is purely an english problem. Portugal have only seen two elevations from their 2010 squad, France three, Spain and Greece four, turkey and the Czech Republic one, Switzerland none, unless they count Arlind Ajeti, who elected to play for Albania. Yet those countries did not win the competition, england did.
And while only two players from other countries can match Barkley’s 22 senior caps (Paul Pogba and Joao Mario), only eight of those appearances have come from the start. Butland has six caps. TheRe
are as many of the 2010 squad currently in League One as have played for england seniors, and some didn’t even get that far. tom thorpe, once of Manchester United, is now in the Indian Premier League with AtK of Kolkata, while Bruno Pilatos, formerly of Middlesbrough, was last seen at Ytterhogdal in Sweden’s sixth tier, having at one time played for Jarrow Roofing.
It is hard to slip this far purely through lack of opportunity, mind you.
Yet clearly, without it, talent has no chance. It is no secret that Pep Guardiola loves Foden. he includes him on the substitutes’ bench, the way Brazil took Ronaldo to the World Cup in 1994 — not to play, but to experience the environment, because he was identified as a great player for the future. Guardiola has compared
Foden to the discoveries made at Barcelona’s academy. He believes the left- footed playmaker possesses the same vision, the same poise.
Yet Foden is close to two months older than Giggs was when he played his first game for Manchester United, and is yet to kick a ball in a competitive fixture for Manchester City.
The next three seasons will be crucial for Rhian Brewster at Liverpool, Marc Guehi at Chelsea and Joel Latibeaudiere at Manchester City.
Jadon Sancho, who would have been a member of this england team had he not been recalled by his club, played eight minutes for Borussia Dortmund against eintracht Frankfurt at the weekend.
Not much, but it’s a start. And that’s what english football needs to give these players: a start. For if we can’t make a team from this lot, why bother to enter at all?