Don’t look back ..young England should let success be the mother of even more success
A SAYING bequeathed by ancient Chinese sages to the most banal of fridge magnet philosophers decrees that “failure is the mother of success”.
It’s right down there with “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” as the last thing you want to hear, following an almighty balls-up.
And it’s a mantra played out by generations of England managers and players as they’ve stumbled from one tournament humiliation to the next.
As in, “Our lads won’t forget how low they felt in (insert random country), which will ensure they don’t repeat it at (insert next random country).”
On the eve of the last Euros, the then-England coach Gary Neville said the squad needed to go through the “pain” of not winning a game at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to deliver success.
Only to be dumped out by Iceland and the pain ratcheted up to a level the Spanish Inquisition could only dream of.
And, right on cue, this week Marcus Rashford claimed the “nasty feeling” of losing to Iceland two years ago will motivate the 11 players who survived it and make Gareth Southgate’s squad succeed.
“We’ll definitely take all the things that happened at that tournament into this one because that’s one of the important things to spur us,” he said.
It isn’t, though, is it? Any student of England’s fortunes, this past half-century, will tell you the one thing that holds players back is looking back.
The last thing this squad of mostly young, well-balanced individuals needs is the baggage that keeps them prisoners of a mythical past.
They don’t need to drag up memories of the 2016 Euros debacle, when Roy Hodgson was so blasé about his quarterfinal opponents he chose to take a boat down the Seine with his coaching staff rather than watch Iceland in their final group game.
It’s the arrogance that kills so many dreams. The belief that the one star on the England shirt is a badge of superiority, despite that shirt never appearing in a major tournament final for 52 years.
Rashford and Co don’t need to hear about 1966, that 5-1 in Munich 17 (yes, 17) years ago or read assessments which measure them individually against the so-called Golden Generation.
They don’t need to draw from the near-misses, Banks’ save, Gazza’s tears, Butcher’s blood, Nobby’s jig, Lampard’s ghost goal.
God’s hand, the penalty misery, the managers who ended up on depression pills, the players whose faces ended up on paper dartboards, indeed anything that has gone on with the senior England side before now. If they need inspiration, they should look much closer to the present and their own generation. They should think of last year. How young Englishmen, many of whom they know or train with, won real trophies. And did so because they showed no fear, just bags of self-belief in their talent and breeding, their manager’s system and the players around them. And expressed themselves fearlessly to win the Under-20 World Cup, the Under-17 World Cup and the Under-19 Euros.
That makes England the current world champions at two of the most important age levels and European champions at another.
They’re the only performances Southgate’s squad need to draw from, or try to emulate, in Russia.
Not the might-have-beens since ’66, but the world-beaters who carved out the best year for English international football since then.
Just for once why don’t England let success be the mother of success?
It’s worth a shot.