Big Sam’s masterplan is to get a few ringers in... how depressing
For English footballers with ambition, there is a place to go that affords a real chance of breaking into the international game. Wales. or Scotland, maybe. Take your pick.
There were nine English-born players in Chris Coleman’s Welsh squad at the European Championship and the Scotland group picked for this weekend’s World Cup qualifier against Malta contains a further six Englishmen.
So this could be an opportune moment for young English players to begin researching their Celtic ancestry, now that Sam Allardyce and the Football Association have a department devoted to outsourcing the England squad abroad. If England is to be an international freefor-all, what remains for a young player at St George’s Park beyond corporate slogans and platitudes?
‘The journey starts here’ reads one of Allardyce’s new branding pronouncements. Yet what journey — and to where?
roy Hodgson’s successor made it plain this week that progress through the national ranks might be curtailed if better can be found beyond these shores so who will buy into this particular trip?
Allardyce would have co-opted Steven Nzonzi into this squad, if FIFA would have allowed it, to take the place of established England men. Maybe Jordan Henderson, who has represented England at every age group level from Under 19 upwards, or Danny Drinkwater, winner of the League title with Leicester last season, who got his first break in international football with England Under 18s.
It is fair to say Nzonzi’s Premier League experience was a little difference from Drinkwater’s, what with being relegated at Blackburn in 2012. He had good years at Stoke, finishing ninth and being voted Player of the Year in 2015, but the £7million fee that took him to Sevilla rather suggests this is not a player who would transform a team — certainly not one with as many shortcomings as England.
Nzonzi is good, but hardly great, and typical of the type of player who gets picked up through residency regulations. Think of previous candidates: Manuel Almunia or Mikel Arteta. Face it, if Nzonzi was a real game-changer, he would be playing for France — as he did at Under 21 level. If his former manager Allardyce hadn’t got the England job he wouldn’t have merited a second glance.
This is why the FA’s department of ringer recruitment is preying largely on age-group footballers. They don’t want the rejects — they want the future, such as Domingos Quina, son of former Portuguese international defender Samuel.
Like his father, Domingos was born in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa but went to Portugal at a young age and progressed through the academy at Benfica. He was at Chelsea from 14, left for West Ham last season, and although only 16, has already represented Portugal 17 times at Under 17 and Under 18 level. Quina is considered an outstanding prospect and the FA think he might be persuaded to switch nationality.
Leaving aside that Quina won the European Under 17 Championship with Portugal this summer and the senior team are also European champions, so he would be taking a sizable step down, how do you think this news makes the England players of similar age feel?
George Hirst of Sheffield Wednesday and Mason Mount of Chelsea were England’s starting strikers in the first European Under 17 Championship game and were replaced later in the competition by Ben Morris and Andre Dozzell (below), both of Ipswich Town. Dozzell’s progress is such that he has already played for Ipswich’s first team — and scored on his debut, just as his father Jason did.
Now he discovers that the FA are trying to recruit a player of his age, and potentially in his position, from Portugal. Might he not be somewhat disillusioned by this development?
Allardyce said he was looking forward to meeting England players across all ages as well as his senior squad, but how will they view him now? If Allardyce embraces this concept, so will his successors. He is no friend of England’s youth. The negotiation with Nzonzi failed, but there will be more to come.
All English players know they face a battle to get into the starting line-ups of the biggest clubs in the country; that they must be a match for some of the best players in the world — yet to face that same selection process for their country is an insult and goes against the main tenet of international sport. The best of ours against the best of yours should be the point of it — unless, of course, we can persuade a few of yours to join our side. And we’re the FA, so we’ve got a right few quid to throw at it, too.
Moussa Dembele is another the FA’s child-catchers are circling. He’s played 34 age-group games for France and occupies the same position as Marcus rashford. But so what? He was on Fulham’s books at the age of 16. He qualifies. Maybe he fancies a change. That England DNA shtick is ancient history. Wait until you see what we stand for now. We haven’t a clue what it is yet, but don’t worry we’ll think of something.
Allardyce even attempted to justify the tawdry opportunism this week while at the same time talking of rescripting the branding at St George’s Park to make England’s players feel at home.
All pragmatism, selfishness and short-termism, he talked of suffering the consequences of not winning a World Cup final
unless England put the best possible team out. He said only a third of Premier League players are English. If an adopted Englishman scored the winning goal, he asked, would it be that bad? And then, he tried equivalency.
‘Cricket do it,’ he said. ‘Rugby do it, athletics do it.’
He would be well advised not to pull too strongly at that particular thread, though, because there is something else cricket and rugby do and he’ll find out what it is if he ever meets up with Trevor Bayliss and Eddie Jones and hears those accents. Just as cricket and rugby have looser standards on player nationality, so the ECB and RFU don’t seem married to the idea that an England team needs an English coach. Just the best man for the job.
So, if we conclude the end always justifies the means, the make-up of England’s management and staff will be called into question a lot quicker than the status of England’s players. Put it like this: even the much- maligned Henderson is considerably closer to nzonzi in ability and track record than Allardyce is to Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp.
Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo, otherwise known as Monchi, the brilliant director of football at nzonzi’s club Sevilla, has enjoyed far greater success in his field than FA technical director Dan Ashworth did at West Bromwich Albion.
The irony being it is hard to imagine an England manager who owes more to the simple issue of nationality than Allardyce. He has the job because the FA wanted an Englishman and considered him the best available in a shrinking pool. He doesn’t have the international experience of Roy Hodgson; he doesn’t have the c.v. of Fabio Capello or Sven Goran Eriksson; he hasn’t even won as many trophies as Steve McClaren.
Had the FA decided to put ethics aside and throw money at any number of foreign candidates, Allardyce’s c. v. might not have merited inclusion in a short-list of 20. It includes two trophies: Division One of the League of Ireland with Limerick and Division Three with notts County. Both came in the last century.
This is not to dismiss his ability, because he has been a good Premier League manager and deserved his opportunity with England — but only because he is English. If he wanted to apply the same rules to his own position that he now seeks to apply to players — and particularly to the age- group prospects — then there were many better qualified.
The most depressing aspect is that this was supposed to be a smarter England regime, all science, psychology and blue sky thought. How does Ashworth explain his famous England DnA to a West African teenager, late of Portugal?
And what happened to that new coach, itching to demonstrate his intelligence and sophistication, who would have a different way of winning each game?
Here it is, folks, the week-one master plan. Drum roll, fanfare. What have you got for us, Sam?
‘Get a few ringers in.’ Oh.