THE PROBLEM WITH CAPTAIN DIER
ERIC DIER was asked about the 2014 World Cup. What did he remember? ‘ Not a lot, to be honest,’ he stumbled. ‘I was in Portugal and my memories are not much. Who won?’
Ladies and gentlemen, meet tonight’s England captain.
And, yes, he’s well down the list. Harry Kane, Jordan Henderson and Gary Cahill are all unavailable, Jordan Pickford is preferred to Joe Hart, Wayne Rooney is now retired. The sixth captain of Gareth Southgate’s time in charge is very much a battlefield promotion.
But this really isn’t about captaincy. It’s about football. When are we going to start producing players who actually watch the game; who feel there is worth in studying style and technique; who are engaged enough to want to observe great teams and great players via more than the fantasy world of a game console? Southgate has recently read The
Captain Class, written by former Wall Street Journal sports editor Sam Walker.
He studied hundreds of teams and noted how the greatest of them often had exceptional captains. Carles Puyol at Barcelona, Philipp Lahm at Bayern Munich, Bill Russell of Boston Celtics, Wayne Shelford of the All Blacks.
Walker described Dier, not Kane, as the ‘ perfect captain’ in Southgate’s team. Maybe this was before he announced he doesn’t pay attention to World Cups. Somehow, one imagines, Lahm did, bearing in mind he won the last one, the fourth German captain to do so. It can’t be coincidence.
Maybe Dier simply had a brain freeze in front of the cameras. Let’s hope. The alternate explanation is dismal indeed. That another generation of English footballers consider ignorance bliss.
Dier wasn’t a kid when Germany became the first European nation to win the World Cup in South America. He was 20. He had played 31 times for Sporting Lisbon. Within a month of the final he signed for Tottenham. And this was a player who had no recall of Germany 7 Brazil 1 in the semifinal; who couldn’t be doing with watching Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez or James Rodriguez to consider how he might control them, given the opportunity.
Dier ( below) wasn’t out of nowhere. He had represented England across four age groups by then. It should be no surprise to him that he is in the senior team now. When does he plan to start paying attention; or is he just destined to make the same mistake as previous generations, like the one that got England knocked out against Uruguay?
That afternoon in Sao Paulo, Suarez gambled on Steven Gerrard not jumping high enough to make his defensive header, Cahill, guarding him, didn’t. There’s something a player might learn from watching a World Cup. That Suarez always gambles optimistically; alternately, find out by reviewing what went wrong on the plane home. It is often not that England are completely bad at tourna- ments, more that they are not very bright. They can’t hold a lead, they can’t manage a game. In 2010, they came out for a second half 2-1 down to Germany and played as if chasing a 4-1 deficit. Pretty soon they were. Germany picked them off with such ease it was embarrassing.
The same with Suarez in 2014, the same with Iceland. England’s betters in Nice were organised, that’s all. In the next round, France destroyed them. Yet game management, game intelligence is the English weakness.
Our players come into matches like students who haven’t properly revised, wondering why they feel so nervous on exam day.
And the irony is, Dier should be one of our smartest footballers. He has had two exceptional games in the Champions League against Real Madrid this season. He can switch with accomplished confidence between the heart of midfield and central defence.
Too many English players are happy being pigeon-holed, but Dier is versatile. He was outstanding for Tottenham against Manchester United, too, then he made a small error and the game was lost.
A World Cup is like that: great players on parade, waiting for a chance to demonstrate it. That’s why they need watching, and controlling, and every last drop of information is vital. Otherwise, history just
repeats.