Seeds of success
IT IS just over five years since the FA opened their St George’s Park National Football Centre. At the time, October 2012, project chairman David Sheepshanks said: “Our aim is to make St George’s Park a sporting destination of choice for coaches, players, administrators and officials.” The intention was that the facility in Burton upon Trent would act as the training base and focal point for all England teams, across both sexes, from the age of 14 upwards. The centre has been criticised for being an expensive white elephant that is too far from anywhere geographically, and has produced too few good results among its teams. Not any more. It is fair to say that the past two years have not been easy for the FA. The exposure of the apparent arrogance and complacency at the highest levels of the organisation over issues around sexual abuse and more lately racism has left them looking weak and poorly-led. On-field success does not and will not ever excuse poor administration, leadership and care of players within its jurisdiction. But today, the FA can at least point to the quite astounding success of its coaching, spotting and development of players in its youth sections with genuine pride. For thanks to the glorious win on Saturday in Kolkata, England’s vibrant Under-17 team added that world championship to the World Cup won by the U20s in South Korea in June. The only team to previously achieve that success in the same year was Brazil. In addition this year, the U20 team won the prestigious Toulon Tournament, the U19s won the European Championship, the U17s reached their European Championship final and the U21s made a European Championship semi-final. The U20 World Cup win was England’s first global competition success since 1966. It is not just the statistics that are impressive. The football played by Steve Cooper’s team in India has been a joy to watch. Names like Liverpool’s Rhian Brewster, who won the Golden Boot for the tournament with an astounding eight goals, including two hat-tricks, and Manchester City’s Phil Foden – two goals on Saturday – are already household.
Three major titles in one year on the men’s side is an incredible feat for coaching teams led by Cooper, Paul Simpson and Keith Downing (and we should not forget that England’s women were third in the World Cup in 2015 and semi-finalists in the Euros this year).
Compared to the relative underachievement of the senior men’s team over the past five years – unable to get out of the group stage of the 2014 World Cup, quarterfinals of Euro 2012 and the round of 16 of the same tournament in 2016 – it is a tale of startling promise.
The FA will point with some justification to the unification of its coaching programmes at St George’s Park as one reason for this youth success.
The next stage, as Simpson has warned, is breaking through in club football. Brewster and Foden are already on the fringes of first-team action at their clubs and others, like Morgan Gibbs-White of Wolves, have broken through.
Former England manager Glenn Hoddle called the period between the ages of 18 and 22 the crucial time in player development. At that point, a club manager either has faith in a youngster and the courage to put him into his team, or not. Too often in the past, young talents have disappeared amid the pressure and fury of club football.
There now looks to be too many of these youngsters at various age groups for that to happen again.
Over to you, club managers.