Young Lions: Is a trophy-laden year the start of something big?
After a trophy-laden summer, can England’s young cubs go on to conquer the world?
It raised eyebrows when, back in March, the English and German football associations announced an exciting new collaboration. Their memorandum of understanding would now see the pair exchange information in a variety of different fields – namely coaching, administration and youth development. A few stifled chuckles could have been excused where the last of those was concerned: what on earth could England – well established as a graveyard for local young talent – possibly teach a rival whose peerless nurturing of its brightest stars was directly responsible for its status as world champions? Little over six months later, the textbooks may need rewriting. England’s success in youth competitions during the summer and early autumn had little precedent globally, let alone on a national level, and anyone familiar with the apathy that used to accompany their fortunes at age group level would be forgiven for wondering if they had alighted on a different planet.
When Manchester City’s Joel Latibeaudiere raised the FIFA Under-17 World Cup trophy at the end of October, he became the fourth England captain to lift a major trophy since June. His team had just fought back from two goals down to inflict an improbable 5-2 trouncing of Spain in front of almost 67,000 people in Kolkata, playing a brand of exhilarating, attacking football their opponents simply couldn’t handle. England had finished runners-up at the UEFA Under-17 Championship in May, losing to the same opponents on penalties, but now they had gone one better in spectacular fashion. Germany, for the record, had tumbled out at the quarter-final stage.
To reduce this to a direct comparison between England and Germany’s success would be to miss the point spectacularly, though. The question is more how England, whose run of summer tournament glory started in fairly low-key fashion on June 10 – when they retained the oft-ignored Toulon Under-20 Tournament with a penalty shootout victory over Ivory Coast – can have effected such a turnaround in fortunes.
It gained genuine lift-off the day after that win in the south of France, when the first-string England Under-20 side – those who had played at Toulon were effectively a makeshift ‘B’ selection, which is notable in itself – defeated Venezuela 1-0 some 5,700 miles away in the South Korean city of Suwon to take their age group’s World Cup. A goal from Everton’s Dominic Calvert-lewin proved enough in the final, and the achievement seemed especially significant. England had gone 17 games and a couple of decades without a win in the competition prior to this year, but here they were, expertly managed by the unheralded Paul Simpson, blasting their way past the likes of Argentina, Mexico and Italy en route to global supremacy – and exuding authority throughout.
“Hopefully it will help the players go on and be more successful,” said Simpson, whose modest career in club management had taken in spells with Rochdale, Carlisle, Preston, Shrewsbury, Stockport and Northwich before he began working with the Under-20s this year. That is the goal and it is why, while this year’s triumphs give tremendous cause for pride and encouragement, there will always be an asterisk next to them until they are shown to have been successful in creating a generation of stars at senior level.
When Dominic Solanke, the Liverpool striker and Golden Ball winner at the Under-20 World Cup, made his senior England debut for the final 15 minutes of November’s goalless draw with Brazil, the scale of his rise could hardly go unnoticed. Solanke turned 20 in September and has long been recognised as an exceptional talent. Liverpool could hardly believe their luck in pinching him over the summer from Chelsea, who froze him out last season when contract talks stalled, and have quickly integrated him into their first-team squad.
But at the time of the Brazil game at Wembley, Solanke had yet to start a top-flight game and, while there is nothing to suggest he will not take to senior international football seamlessly, the issue’s very clear. How can England’s young players – the best on the planet – fulfil their potential if, at club level, the opportunities are so slow to arise?
It is a question that applies to the Under-20s, the Under-17s and also the exceptional Under-19 side who overcame Portugal in July to triumph at the UEFA Under-19 Championship and keep England’s golden summer rolling on. One of the latter’s best players, Ryan Sessegnon, doesn’t turn 18 until May and recently hit a hat-trick on his 50th outing for Fulham. But the Cottagers are, at the time of writing, a mid-table Championship side. Had Sessegnon joined one of his many top-flight suitors during the close-season, the opportunities to play wouldn’t have been there.
That is why Jadon Sancho, the Under-17s forward, moved to Borussia Dortmund for the next stage of his football education, after judging that the pathway to first-team football at Manchester City was too complex. He’s already featured for the Bundesliga club’s first team, and that’s one area in which the Germans remain at a significant remove from Premier League clubs. Phil Foden, the brilliant attacking midfielder named as the player of the tournament in India, may experience similar problems at
DOMINIC SOLANKE, GOLDEN BALL WINNER AT THE UNDER-20 WORLD CUP, MADE HIS SENIOR DEBUT AGAINST BRAZIL BUT HAD YET TO START A GAME In THE TOP FLIGHT
the Etihad Stadium, and Rhian Brewster, top scorer at the Under-17 World Cup with eight goals, has already been linked with a move from Liverpool to Sancho’s current club.
The danger that English domestic football might lose its best young talents to countries more accustomed to putting time ahead of money is real. But the kind of player being produced offers plenty of room for encouragement. Significant investment in the controversial Elite Player Performance Plan has seen the top clubs’ academies turn into talent factories that produce slick, athletic and technical players in quantities never seen before. They’ll be better equipped, the theory goes, to slot into the kind of style espoused by Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp at first-team level when the time comes.
The same goes at international level. The “England DNA” philosophy trumpeted by the Football Association runs the risk of sounding like an empty buzzword but, watching the national sides at various levels play fast, fluid, purposeful football of similar style throughout the year, this integrated approach is clearly paying off to an extent.
Now, at long last, it needs to translate itself to the senior level. Next year’s World Cup will probably come too soon for that, even if Solanke and, hopefully, some of his peers have made headway at home before then. In the short term, a few more familiar lessons may need learning. The only England youth outfit not to reach the final this summer were Aidy Boothroyd’s Under-21s, beaten in the semi-finals at the European Championship in Poland. Their penalty shootout vanquishers following a 2-2 in Tychy? Germany.
That knowledge-sharing project may still have some uses after all.