I swear we’ve been here before? England eliminated at the
first knock out stage of a major Championship and via penalties? If we are to
change this from becoming (I appreciate it already is) a regular occurrence
then we need to change the way we run our game, starting from the very bottom.
Germany changed their mentality following their Euro 2000
nightmare, and invested heavily in producing a high quality batch of
technically good young players, fit to not just challenge at one major
tournament, but every! It’s been 12 years since then, and their current squad
has just two, yes two, players whom are 30 or older (Miroslav Klose and Tim
Wiese, both of whom aren’t regulars.) They have such strength in depth the
likes of Mario Gotze and Toni Kroos simply haven’t had a look in at the
tournament so far. Of the German Under 21 side that thrashed England 4-0 in the
European Championship final, six of them are in the current German squad, in
comparison to England, whom have taken just two from that squad (James Milner
and Theo Walcott)
The current German coach is Joachim Low, and I’ll lump a lot
of money that no ‘one will know who he managed before the German national side,
or even how well done. I didn’t, I had to look it up. And as it happens he
never did exceptional anywhere he did, with clubs ranging from Adanaspor to
Karlsruher. He joined the German national side as part of the coaching set up
in 2004 and since then has had incredible success with his country. Don’t get
me wrong Low has proven to be tactically good; however does his CV compare to
the likes of Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello? It doesn’t come close. But
for some obscure reason, the English FA would rather throw £6million a year at
a foreign manager, than put it into grass roots football. Eriksson and Capello
are very good managers and both have moderate levels of success with England;
however they were always going to be a short-term fix. The English FA needs to
understand that having a great manager isn't the biggest piece of the puzzle.
The FA has changed something for the better over the recent
months, as from next season, such young footballers won’t have to make the
quick jump to 11 a side football, which has so often been criticised. Jose
Mourinho recently commented that England will never win anything whilst boys
play 11-a-side, going on to say “In England you are trained to win, in Spain
you are coached to play”. He has a point, for every English Scott Parker there
is a Spanish Andres Iniesta.
Maybe I’m being harsh on Parker, he’s a solid defensive
midfielder; however there was numerous occasions against Italy were his passing
ability and poor technique was on show. Many will say Parker’s game isn’t about
passing, but when you play as one of two centre midfielders, you’ve got to a
better passer of the ball then he is. All four of the Italian centre
midfielders would have got in alongside Steven Gerrard. It’s not just Parker
though, our England squad only has a maximum of four world class players (Wayne
Rooney, Ashley Cole, Joe Hart and Gerrard), which when you consider the likes
of Fernando Torres, Rafael Van Der Vaart and Kroos all struggled to get into
their retrospective sides at the tournament, our lack of brilliant players
hindered us.
I’m going to leave the article on a good note however; our
Under 21 side of 2009 did make the Under21 finals and we do have numerous young
players coming through and in the likes of Jack Wilshere, Tom Cleverely and
Martin Kelly there is undoubted potential. Will we get anywhere at the 2014
World Cup, no! So why not use that as a platform for Euro 2016, lets field a
young side to gain experience at a major tournament and really have a go at a
tournament we’ve a, all be it minor, chance in.
