LUCKY GARETH HAS TIME ON HIS HANDS
CLICK. Just what was that noise ringing around St George’s Park after it was announced Jordan Henderson, Jack Grealish, Raheem Sterling, Mason Mount and Luke Shaw would not be travelling for tonight’s game?
The sound of another piece of the jigsaw snapping into place?
Or a death-throe “tick” of the infamous countdown clock that lies hidden out of sight somewhere like American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s tell-tale heart?
When the FA built their national football centre, it was designed to make England into world champions.
Their chairman at the time, Greg Dyke, right, even set a target of the 2022 World Cup.
Such are the vagaries of football’s fortunes, it was decided that keeping the clock that was installed in the coaches’ room counting down to that date was unhelpful.
But the process is working. The promotion of Conor Gallagher, on loan at Crystal Palace from Chelsea, from the under-21s to fly out with the firstteam squad means three of the under17s squad who won the 2017 World Cup will be in San Marino – Phil Foden and Emile Smith Rowe complete the hat-trick.
That was always the vision for a nation that in the past fretted too much over metatarsals and squeezing Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard into the same midfield. There would be such a conveyor belt of talent that the individuals – the bare bones – would not matter any more.
And so we head to San Marino.The England team will look very different to the one that eventually kicks off in Qatar a year from now.
But the mentality, ethos and belief of manager Gareth Southgate’s squad will be the same.
In the past, hands would have been wrung at the incredible array of reasons that have robbed us of players who, for now, feel like first-team shoo-ins: Sterling’s personal reasons, Shaw’s concussion, Mount’s wisdom tooth, Declan Rice’s illness.
We would have agonised over the knocks that have also ruled out Grealish and Henderson. Instead, Friday night’s patched-up side had more caps than any England team for eight years.
And Southgate’s determination to make playing for the country a more collective experience means that able deputies abound to maintain the momentum. “It’s something that was our aim at St George’s Park,”
Southgate said. “Not only to have an environment where players could do what they have done this week and transition smoothly across to be with us. They can slide across this for the matches, we know exactly what they’ve been doing all week in terms of their training load –so that process is clear.
“But it’s also the more winning experiences they could have, the more big-match experience they can have and the feeling of what it means to play well and succeed in an England shirt.”