Club icons who could not cut it in national colours
Three Golden Generation stars offer fresh insight into why they failed to deliver on world stage, writes Alan Tyers
The obsession with winning for their clubs made it hard to pitch up for England and feel ‘a love’
Rio Ferdinand, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard: club greats, but at international level, specialists in failure. Few are better qualified to debate the eternal question of why England continually underperform, and their discussion with Jake Humphrey on BT Sport this weekend made for excellent viewing.
From Ferdinand’s 1997 international debut to the 2014 World Cup 0-0 with Costa Rica that marked Gerrard and Lampard’s final game, the trio spanned the rise, decline, and fall of England’s Golden Generation (add your own snarky air quotes, should you wish). Good on them for being prepared to analyse their experience.
Ferdinand noted that the “obsession with winning” for their clubs made it hard to pitch up for England and magically feel for their Premier League rivals what Gerrard called “a love or a bond”.
Gerrard said: “I’d speak to players like Coutinho and they cannot wait to go away with Brazil. You didn’t get that with England. You look forward to the games, but everything else around the game was a bit…” He made an exasperated face. We know how you feel, Steven.
All three have a Champions League medal, Ferdinand six Premier League titles, Lampard three. Gerrard and Lampard are in their clubs’ all-time team, Ferdinand let the question hang: “We would have loved to have won with England, but to the detriment of winning with your club as well?” Entirely fair enough.
If they are right that being the main men at title rivals made it hard to feel like one collective England, perhaps the current national side have unwittingly hit upon a cunning plan.
Up-and-comers Ruben Loftus-cheek, Dominic Solanke and Jesse Lingard are supporting rather than key figures for their employers. Stalwarts such as Harry Kane, Joe Hart, Eric Dier and Ryan Bertrand are not at clubs with realistic title chances. Perhaps England could yet become a pinnacle, not a distraction. At least, all three noted, we now have a series of age group teams winning together.
They had other reasons too, though, for the England Conundrum. Ferdinand said: “We had the best midfielders in the world” and should have just tried to get them all in the team “in a diamond or whatever”.
Surely that was half the problem – trying to squeeze in all the top club players come what may. “We’d comfortably get through groups with 4-4-2, get to hot countries and play someone like Paraguay,” said Lampard. “There’d be four little fellas in midfield playing one-twos around you, and me and Steven are out of position. I’m used to being free to get forward, suddenly I’ve got to defend.”
Here, for once, Gerrard and Lampard dovetailed. “I don’t think we had a manager who had a philosophy or a way of playing that worked,” Gerrard said. “We could have had a better manager.”
Could we, though? We tried English ones, foreign ones, stern ones, relaxed ones, technical ones, tub-thumping ones, and paid them top dollar. Who else was there?
The best bit of a fascinating show came from Ferdinand. “We’d go into games later in the competitions almost half knowing we are going to get popped, played off the pitch.” That, he said, was a rude awakening from bossing it at Old Trafford.
There is one other explanation, although it would be not be fair to expect chummy Jake to put it to these three ledges: England’s best players are not quite as good as they think they are. As football telly, though, this was certainly world-class.