WE’RE BECOMING A BUNCH OF SOFTIES
Ince worried ‘quiet’ England lack the bottle
PAUL INCE fears England don’t have enough hard men with the bottle for the battle at the World Cup.
Ince famously bled for the Three Lions’ cause in a France ’98 qualifier against Italy in 1997 (below).
Just as Terry Butcher had done against Sweden eight years earlier in a 0-0 draw which helped the nation reach Italia ’90.
But as the current crop prepare to kick off their Group G campaign against Tunisia tomorrow, Ince admits the number of players willing to put their bodies on the line is a cause for concern.
He said: “It is a quiet team, England, and that’s what worries me. Because if things do go wrong, are there enough vocal people in the team to turn it around? We’re kind of losing that warrior-type of player. Generations have changed, society has changed, our kids have been brought up differently, academies have changed. Everything has a soft feeling now.
“If you talk to the likes of myself, Roy Keane, Bryan Robson, we’d tell you about our tough backgrounds, the way we had to build our characters up.
“Tony Adams, people like that, you could go through them all. It was the tough lives we had that set us out to be different. You take that into your football, that’s why you have character, why you become men.
“But nowadays football has changed so much and I don’t think you’re going to have those characters. You might have one or two.
“But if you look through the England team you’d probably say Gary Cahill is the one who is up there. He played alongside John Terry for quite a while at Chelsea. Jordan Henderson, yes, but when you talk about the competitive likes of Adams, people like that, they are a dying breed.
“Once JT and Jamie Carragher retired from England, that was probably the dying of that ilk of footballer.
“Sometimes you can do it a different way – Harry Kane is not a speaker, he’s not what you’d describe as an England captain when you go through the list of England captains.
“Kane is a bit more David Beckham-ish, where he’ll set an example by the way he plays.
“Henderson and Cahill are probably the only ones of that warrior-type of player, then I don’t really see anyone else.”
Henderson, Cahill and Co will get their first chance to show what they are really made of against Nabil Maaloul’s Tunisia in Volgograd tomorrow night.
The countdown is well and truly on, and Ince underlined the importance of the fixture to Gareth Southgate’s squad. He added: “I always feel that in the first game of a World Cup you can’t get beaten.
“Get a point at least and go from there. If you lose the first game, you’re chasing.
“England would expect to beat Tunisia, but they’re not going to be a walkover.
“It will be tough and watching the game against Nigeria a couple of weeks ago, Tunisia will have looked at that and thought they could have a crack at our midfield.”
Despite the flaws Ince insists England must kick off believing they can win the World Cup. He said: “People understand we are trying to build something, that we’re going with a young-ish squad.
“The signs are they want to build for four years’ time.”