Playing for your country is a proud time & deserves appreciation, not lectures

Mr Marmite.. Love him, hate him, you can’t ignore him

JAMIE VARDY and Gary Cahill deserve admiration after stepping aside from England duty – not warnings that they will let people down badly in future.

Vardy has lived the dream at every level from non-league to winning the title with Leicester’s 5,000-1 shots and the World Cup.

If, at 31, he cannot envisage being involved at the next major tournament, he has taken an honest decision to retire from international football.

And Chelsea defender Cahill (above) will be 33 in December. If he can see the writing on the wall, let him bow out on his terms.

Two fine servants of English football got me thinking about a player’s right to choose when or if they should retire from the international game.

The broadcaster Richard Keys says he cannot understand a player walking out on his country because, “It says a lot about his personality and lack of character. For sure, he will he will let you down badly again later in life”.

I have no wish to pick an argument with Keys or anyone else – but does Vardy (above, right), who worked his way up from a job in a factory to the World Cup, lack personality or character? To represent your country is the proudest moment in any career. But there are many reasons why you might quit international football and it is fatuous to speculate that it is down to personality or character.

I understand why people might ask questions, but sometimes the decision is almost forced upon you. There may be problems at home – illness, kids playing up, depression, who knows?

You might find the travel exhausting, so you return to your club burned out.

It is especially hard for players included in a squad for a doubleheader abroad, knowing they are unlikely to feature in either game.

Those two weeks can feel like a lifetime – it must be like carrying drinks as 12th man in an overseas Test series as a cricketer.

You might have a history of injuries and choose to step down to prolong your career – Alan Shearer retired from England at 30 and was still knocking in goals for Newcastle approaching his 36th birthday.

And at current pay levels, prolonging your Premier League career by a couple of years is worth millions.

So who are we to judge when players call it a day with their country? Everyone retires for a reason. I stopped playing for Wales when I was captain of Blackburn Rovers – then a Premier League club in Europe – because the manager John Toshack wanted to select a League One player ahead of me.

Maybe I was hasty, but I still believe if Toshack had stayed in charge over the long term, I was never going to be picked.

I walked away due to circumstances I felt were beyond my control and carried on playing

until I was 37. If Toshack had picked me on merit, I would have 80 caps, not 39.

You would have to ask the managers I played for after 2005, but I don’t think I let anyone down after my retirement from Wales.

There will be fans who think international footballers are spoilt rotten – and they would be right.

Charter flights, luxury hotels, great food... no arguments, it’s all laid on for you.

But at some clubs during these breaks, bosses are left with skeleton squads of non international s–too few to work with effectively – and they will often give those lads four or five days off. Those left behind might take their families away for a short break and it leads to envy in the dressing room.

I have heard players complain they were lugging kit bags across Europe as unused reserves on international duty while their mates were sunning themselves in Dubai or Tenerife.

And in 2012, Roy Hodgson told Tube passengers in an unguarded comment that Rio Ferdinand’s days as an England player were numbered and, sure enough, Rio wasn’t in the next squad.

But Ferdinand can’t have been letting many people down – because he won the title and was in the Premier League team of the year in 2013.

Is international duty even the pinnacle of the game any more?

When he is 50, will Gareth Bale – sensational for Wales against Ireland on Thursday – regard reaching the Euro 2016 semi-finals as his defining achievement or winning four Champions League finals with Real Madrid?

Will Ryan Giggs look back more fondly on his 64 Wales caps than his 22 winner’s medals with Manchester United?

So I don’t think Vardy and Cahill have let anyone down.

They don’t need lectures – they deserve appreciation.

Hodgson told Tube passengers that Rio’s days were numbered