Lee Carsley calls on Harvey Elliott as he begins new England Under-21s era
This time the discourse centred on the emergence of Tino Livramento, Folarin Balogun and Harvey Elliott, the youngest and one of the newest members of a new-look England Under-21s squad. There were a couple of questions about Ryan Sessegnon, no longer the prodigious teenager but rather the veteran of the team, and Callum Hudson-Odoi, who declined a call-up in favour of training at Chelsea. But as a new cycle begins, one constant remains: the conundrum of getting an incredibly gifted pool of players to click.
That task now lies with Lee Carsley who, to use the words of his predecessor Aidy Boothroyd, is in possession of the “utterly impossible job” after being appointed to the role this summer. After the ignominy of exiting the European Championship at the group stage for the fifth time in six tournaments, there is fresh optimism, with 13 new call-ups, including eight teenagers, joining Max Aarons, Conor Gallagher, Curtis Jones and Oliver Skipp, all of whom started as England bowed out bottom of Group D in March.
The Saint-Étienne goalkeeper Etienne Green, who was born in Colchester to a French mother and an English father but is yet to be capped at any level, and the 19-year-old defender Charlie Cresswell, the under-23s captain at Leeds, are highly rated but Elliott, who turned 18 in April and made his full Premier League debut for Liverpool last Saturday, is arguably the most exciting newbie in the 24-man squad. Elliott was both emotional and ecstatic upon receiving his call-up on Thursday.
“I watched a lot of his games at Blackburn [last season],” says Carsley, the former Everton midfielder whose previous post was England Under-20s head coach. “You are always cautious to see how they will get on in a firstteam environment, especially in the Championship which is a tough physical league. He is an exciting player who creates a lot of chances.
“The way [the Blackburn manager] Tony Mowbray played put Harvey into some really good positions where he affected games with goals and assists. He has carried that on in pre-season and showed that by getting minutes at Liverpool, which is not an easy team to get into. It is the right time for Harvey to come in and it was great having the phone call with him.”
England begin their latest Under-21 European Championship qualifying campaign, which Carsley stresses is “by no means a tap-in”, against Kosovo in September. “I want to make sure it is a really difficult squad to get into,” he says. “The next squad I name [for qualifiers against Slovenia and Andorra in October], I don’t want to just copy and paste the same squad. The fact they are potentially one team away from the seniors, and they can see how well they did in the summer, inspiring a nation, hopefully they can take something from that and that is what we are trying to get them towards.”
As Boothroyd previously cited, the dual demands of producing players for the senior team and competing for honours can create blurred lines when it comes to analysing progress. Carsley, who will be assisted by Ashley Cole, who will combine the role with coaching Chelsea’s under-15s and under-16s, is unequivocal about the job specification. “The job is to support the senior team to win a major tournament and I understand my role in that,” he says. “Part of that is making sure that the under-21s are ready to compete at the highest levels and that includes getting to the latter stages of tournaments.”
How imperative was it to freshen up the group? “I thought it was important that we put our own, in terms of the coaching team, stamp on the squad,” says Carsley. “To call them up into this squad does not seem like a gamble or something that we have rushed where we have jumped too far ahead of ourselves. It is a squad with a nice blend, 13 new players and 11 from the previous campaign and I think there is a nice balance. We have a good chance to set our own targets and put our own stamp on the competition.”
The Manchester United teenager Mason Greenwood, who was left out of Gareth Southgate’s squad, was not included because, Carsley says, the striker is regarded as a senior player, while Hudson-Odoi rejected the opportunity to join up with the under-21s. “I’ve had some really good conversations with him and his advisor and Callum felt that it wasn’t the right time for him at the minute to come [away] with England,” Carsley says.