I know this was against San Marino but Barkley's and Kanes performance against San Marino was world class
well he was. he had a terrible U20 World Cup, for example. nobody can claim they saw his last season coming. nobody.
Well of course no-one could foresee him scoring 30 goals last season but I thought he'd be a very good player in the Prem and for Spurs just not so soon was happy for him to be our 3rd striker last year. Think people just saw what they thought was a lack of pace and him being slightly ungainly and wrote him off
Can you clarify? I seem to recall he's done pretty well so far in a senior England shirt or were you meaning the U20's World Cup?
I don't think he or the team was that bad at the U20 World Cup. There was a massive overreaction to that tournament, especially from journalists on twitter.
I remember following it closely very well 2 years ago. How time flies! Looking back with all of the players who've come through it is shocking how we didn't do better: Kane, Dier, Stones, Garbutt, Barkley, Pricthard, Thorpe, Flanagan, JWP, and Lascelles (kinda).
Yeah in hindsight the group was a very tough one for that age group - Chile who went on to only get edged out on extra time by Ghana and have shown themselves to have one of the strongest technical setups in football, Iraq who got to the semi finals and only lost on pens (and we deserved to beat) and a decent Egypt team most of whom are senior internationals now and their best ones from that group are doing well in Europe. Our squad was also the usual last minute group thrown together with Peter Taylor stepping in as coach and bugger all in serious prep for a tournament. I do think also that although there were some talented players, there was still some weak ones picked due to the poor talent id, players like Luke Williams, Dan Potts, John Lundstram, Larnell Cole and of course the obligatory Connar Coady captaincy. Peter Taylor at that point had also passed his sell by date a bit as coach.
Tbf I missed the u20 WC as I was in US, but I always thought he looked decent for England. I remember an u18 game I think where I thought he was the standout player technically and he was playing in midfield or AM. Assume the WC was a blip in that sense. I thought he generally outscored Wickham for England, may be wrong.