The truth is a lot of English players are just not good enough
Louis van Gaal was discussing methodology. ‘i train the brains not the legs,’ he said. He was asked how that would work in English football with players notorious for displaying more emotion than intellect. Van Gaal became defensive. ‘That is your opinion,’ he insisted. ‘We shall have to wait and see. From the outside it is fair to say this, but i don’t want to be judging as an outsider. At the moment they are doing great.’
That was pre-season. it would be fair to say the greatness of some individuals at Manchester united has been reassessed since then, and transfer deadline day is expected to confirm a new reading. Departures are predicted, and at Manchester City, too. Just how many can be successfully discarded in such haste is unclear, but there is a fair chance some will be saying goodbye in English.
Tom Cleverley, Danny Welbeck, maybe Ashley Young at united, certainly Micah Richards and scott sinclair if buyers can be found by City. Many of those who were tipped to form the basis of the national team are now being encouraged to consider Aston Villa or Everton, to drop down, to settle.
Jack Rodwell has already followed Adam Johnson in an attempt to rebuild his career at sunderland, Wilfried Zaha has returned to Crystal Palace. As the ill-fated golden generation bows out, we may be witnessing year zero for their presumed successors.
it is not always lack of opportunity that thwarts English ambition. Players like Cleverley, Richards and Young have had chances. They just haven’t been good enough.
When City had limitations placed on their squad by UEFA this season, some cheerfully predicted it would mean greater opportunities for young home-grown players. Yet the domestic clear-out continues apace.
only Joe Hart is English and rated at City. James Milner can’t get in the team — he has featured for just 12 minutes this season — and one of the solutions to the home-grown requirement has been to borrow thrusting newcomer Frank Lampard, 36, from sister club New York City.
Equally, while Wayne Rooney is Manchester united’s captain and Phil Jones and Chris smalling will stay at old Trafford, with defender Daley Blind arriving and Marcos Rojo, too, if contractual complexities can be overcome, their first-team opportunities are likely to be reduced.
The pair were given their chance at the start of this season and united’s defence has been an accident waiting to happen. Last week, Van Gaal gave the reserves a run against Milton Keynes Dons, including Welbeck, Reece James and Nick Powell in his starting line-up. united lost 4-0.
Plainly, it is not solely English players that are failing at the elite clubs. shinji Kagawa is returning to Borussia Dortmund, Nani is now on loan to sporting Lisbon. The transfer market brings no guarantees and in a 25-man squad with limitless home-grown additions, the majority will fail to regularly make the team.
The problem for English football is the proportion. Yes, Manchester City also sold Javi Garcia this summer, but the English numbers are so small to begin with that if they now lose Richards and sinclair, as well as Rodwell, it as good as represents a cull.
Liverpool’s Englishness is the exception — for the rest of the top clubs, two or three departures are a significant reduction and, certainly in united’s case, an indictment of the English game.
Europe’s take on the average English professional should worry the Football Association as much as the dwindling numbers in the first team at elite clubs. With an influx of foreign coaches, there is cause and effect.
one of the reasons Tim sherwood did not last long at Tottenham, and was replaced by Mauricio Pochettino, was his dismissive comments about some of his foreign players, the perception being that, long term, he wished to build an English squad.
it is the belief of the hierarchy at White Hart Lane that English players do not engage with the game intellectually, as foreign ones do. This may be inverted prejudice, or a simplistic generalisation — and certainly Raheem sterling in particular issued a snappy rejoinder on behalf of English football for Liverpool yesterday — but little that has happened at united this season flies the flag for English players as deep thinkers or good students.
one can argue that Van Gaal has been too ambitious in trying to implement his 3-5-2 system so soon, that his players may have been better off in a conventional and familiar back four — but that should not hide the fact that they should have been able to play it, and that in just about every other major football nation, such a change could be brought about in pre-season without skipping a beat.
Jones and smalling should not look all at sea; Young should have an innate sense of defensive positioning. Nobody is being asked to play line-back, center field or point guard here. This is still football. Van Gaal’s system is a tweak, not string theory.
LAST week, announcing his latest squad, Roy Hodgson appeared rather irritated that some had made merry with his positive comparison between England and Germany after the World Cup. He said he is aware England do not play like Germany now, but was convinced they could one day. After all, he concluded, Philipp Lahm and Bastian schweinsteiger did not play like their 2014 selves when they were young men breaking into the side.
This is true. Yet Hodgson then went on to suggest there were fitness issues surrounding left back Luke shaw, the world’s most expensive teenager following his £30million transfer to Manchester united from southampton.
These had been identified at his former club, Hodgson said, were mentioned by his own staff during the World Cup period and had carried on to Shaw’s career at Manchester United. The implication was that the player required, in decorous terms, a little lifestyle adjustment.
Van Gaal has since denied he has a problem with Shaw’s fitness, although he certainly alluded to it on the summer tour of the United States. Now consider Lahm. He may not have played like Germany’s future World Cup-winning captain while on loan to Stuttgart at 19, but do you think anyone needed to talk to him about keeping fit?
Der feine Unterschied: Wie man heute Spitzenfußballer wird is the catchy title of Lahm’s autobiography. It translates as The Subtle Difference — How to Become a Top Footballer. No English-language version as yet; but, then again, why would there be?