The paucity of English opportunity thread

Maybe it just isn't.

 

Probably not get to 40 if the last matches are treated as dead rubbers with lots of youth players getting on. Of the more established options Quansah and Elliott will be hoping to get on for Liverpool and hopefully Nwaneri gets on sometime,

Our only hope for Goalkeeper is Scott Carson coming on for some reason.

 

There's no reason why the last games would be treated as dead rubbers as it's a league format with seeding for the next stage draw. In theory all the games matter.

 

It does but if teams are pretty confident of not moving postion they might not bother as much,

 

Of the 203 players who have appeared during a WSL match so far this season, only 62 are eligible to play for England (30.5%), as the WSL becomes increasingly global. A sign of success? Or will foreign imports hinder the prospects of young English players?https://t.co/3ol3ukjTT9

— Tom Garry (@TomJGarry) October 5, 2024

The WSL is now matching the PL.

 

No English starters for Fulham today as Smith Rowe dropped to the bench.

 

England's debacle v Greece was a selection gone wrong and Led Carsley's reality check. But it exposed the issue any England manager is going to grapple with. So many brilliant players...but all of the same sort. There's a problem in the academies.https://t.co/yiufkIq1FZ

— Jonathan Northcroft (@JNorthcroft) October 12, 2024

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No10s galore – but why are England producing only one type of player?

Next permanent England manager faces eternal dilemma: academies strong on style but lacking in substance. So, where are the emerging goalkeepers, centre backs, holding midfielders and leaders?


A friend has sons coming through the ranks at a Premier League club. He also works in football so can see both parts — what is going into the pipeline and all the sugar gushing out the other end. After England’s debacle against Greece, he called me. “You’ve got to write about the academies,” he said.

Our conversation struck chords. On Monday I met Gus Poyet and he talked, amid all the nice candy in England’s top flight, about a certain something lacking. About teams who “lose 6-0 and no one gets a yellow card” and illustrate a creeping culture where style is more important than winning.

“The problem is the academies,” Poyet said. “They are only teaching one way. They are not teaching suffering, competing, contact. And young players have changed with [respect to] leadership.”

There are different ways to view Thursday’s mess at Wembley. One is short term, that a well intentioned but inexperienced interim manager learnt painfully that actual football is not fantasy football. You don’t contrive an XI to cram in all the stars to score points. “I won’t be doing that again,” said a chastened Lee Carsley.

But the broader way to look at it is that it only took Carsley a third game in charge to be defeated by the same problem Gareth Southgate wrestled at the end of his eight-year reign. Namely, what does an England team look like when the materials to make it with are so out of balance?

There is sugar. A sweet bounty of No10s, attacking midfielders and wingers, the likes of which we’ve never seen. But there is very little meat, veg or salt. As my friend asked: where are our goalkeepers? Our centre backs? Where are our holding midfielders?

Carsley’s stab at it on Thursday, an XI featuring three No10s, two wingers, and two full backs who really want to be creative midfielders — but no striker — produced an England that had all the bright feathers of a peacock and all the backbone of a jellyfish. At Euro 2024 Southgate produced his worst tournament team from his best array of footballers because he tried cramming too many stars who play in similar ways and areas into the front part of the pitch.

And yet both were just responding to resources, to England’s plethora of brilliant but samey talents which is not balanced by players good at the less glamorous stuff.

The academies. My friend described watching “development stage” games involving boys from 12 to 16. He said they were like the youth football you see in the Netherlands and Belgium — “virtually non-contact.”

He said you saw boys in every position doing the same things — dribbling, passing in tight areas, having nice touches — and all that was great, but added: “But you don’t see centre halves who can clear a channel, or deal with a straight ball, or head it, or defend space. You don’t see players who can take contact. You think, ‘Who here would have the mentality to win without the ball?’ ”
England’s academies follow EPPP, the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, introduced in 2012 as a necessary transformation of youth coaching. England’s failure to reach Euro 2008, and humiliation by a vibrant young Germany team at the 2010 World Cup, underlined that the technical and tactical standards of English players were not good enough.

A fundamental shift was made. The Leicester City manager and former England Under-17 coach, Steve Cooper, put it to me succinctly: “When you boil it down, EPPP is about the individual,” he said. Academies went from thinking the goal was to produce great age-group sides that might, for example, win an FA Youth Cup, to believing the object is to produce fantastic individual footballers. Nobody brings through groups of youngsters together, in the mould of Manchester United’s Class of ’92, any more.

One of my friend’s lads is a defender. From when he was little he loved it all: tackles, organising, lurking behind the play and covering the gaps. There’s a danger of it getting coached out of him. The work is all ball skills, dribbling, self-expression. Sugar. Or, per Roy Keane’s inimitable reaction to England’s fey lack of structure against Greece: “Freedom? That’s the new buzz word. That’s the new garlic bread.”

My friend talked about what happens as you go up through the academy age groups. How the focus is on individual plans, self-expression, and not on pragmatism or even really on team play. We discussed a right back once projected for big things. He’s strong, rugged and keeps it simple. Defends. Plays in straight lines. But he started wobbling off the pathway when coaches tried to get him to come inside.

Of course if he could do so it would be nice, because Pep Guardiola has shown us the benefits of full backs who step into midfield. But not all of them can. Pep doesn’t ask England’s best right back of all time, Kyle Walker, to do so, for example. The young right back we mentioned has already drifted out of the Premier League. A born defender may end up being lost.

Carsley’s options on Thursday demonstrated the imbalance. He fielded all of Jude Bellingham, Cole Palmer, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon and used Noni Madueke off the bench. Back from injury he now has Jack Grealish to factor into his plans for Finland on Sunday too. Morgan Gibbs-White, James Maddison, Eberechi Eze, Jadon Sancho, Emile Smith-Rowe, Morgan Rogers and Jarrod Bowen are among those not even in the squad.

Yet he had zero natural left backs to choose from, paired John Stones with a youngster making his first international start at centre back and his holding midfielder was someone no longer used in that role by his club — Declan Rice. Other options for England’s No6 position are Angel Gomes and Curtis Jones, converted No10s, and Kobbie Mainoo and Conor Gallagher, who are attacking midfielders at heart.

The older generation of solid players beloved by Southgate are dying out. Kieran Trippier and Jordan Henderson are gone, Kalvin Phillips may never return from the wilderness, Walker is showing signs of decline at 34 and Harry Maguire, 31, and Luke Shaw 29, are increasingly dogged by injuries. The picture at club level confirms the decline in English players who provide ballast. Take the Premier League top four at present. Of the 24 players who comprise their first-choice goalkeepers, back fours and holding players, only four are English (and that’s counting Stones at Manchester City — which is arguable) and three of them are right backs.


The age of England’s backline at Euro 2024
GKs – J Pickford (30), A Ramsdale (26), D Henderson (27)

DFs – K Walker (34), L Shaw (28), J Stones (30), M Guehi (23), T Alexander-Arnold (25), K Trippier (33), E Konsa (26), L Dunk (32), J Gomez (27)

Where are the goalkeepers, centre backs and holding players? Well, when Foden, Sancho, Gallagher and Smith-Rowe won the Under-17 World Cup with England in 2017 the goalkeeper was Curtis Anderson. He’s in an office. He works as a financial adviser now. One of the centre backs was Marc Guéhi but the other, Joel Latibeaudiere, plays for Jamaica these days. The full backs (Steven Sessegnon and Jonathan Panzo) are at Wigan Athletic and Portuguese minnows Rio Ave respectively. The defensive midfielders (George McEachran and Tashan Oakley-Boothe) are at Grimsby Town and the even smaller Portuguese minnows Estrela da Amadora.

There seem no English Pau Cubarsís or Leny Yoros, teenage defenders of world-class potential, but there are yet more exciting attack-minded talents emerging such as Rogers, Jaden Philogene, Tyler Dibling, Ethan Nwaneri and Jamie Gittens. If the academies really were producing an unstoppable bounty, how do you explain the Uefa Youth League? Chelsea were the last English winners in 2016, three of the four English entrants went out at the group stage last season and the last English quarter-finalists were in 2019.


It feels a rebalancing is needed. The flair produced by EPPP has put England in a tantalising position but can they win without players who can do the other stuff? It’s not position specific, because you can have attackers and creators who also cover for team-mates and dig in — Bukayo Saka is a noble exception from the younger English generation and Bernardo Silva is a great example.

But look at both Greek goals at Wembley and the general lack of interest among England’s players, throughout the game —in covering, tackling, raging against a bad performance, and doing unsung stuff for the team. My friend worries the academy culture is even affecting coaching. “Attacking is like PE and art at school. All the kids have smiles on their faces and everyone wants to coach it. Defending is like maths and English. You’re less popular when you teach that.”

 

I disagree somewhat about a lack of centre backs but I do agree about being a lack of some kind of hard men that out there that put their bodies on the line which after the other night we seem to lack. Even the Greek defenders managed to get the blocks in and tackled when we were in their box. Maybe it’s a slight overreaction but I’ve often thought we have lost the art of actual defending.

 

England's Generation Next.

Some of the best English prospects born between 2004 and 2008.

I’ve built several shadow teams before, but this one is definitely one of the most impressive.

The talent and potential in this group really stand out.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/X2L8biScwV

— Football Talent Scout - Jacek Kulig (@FTalentScout) October 17, 2024

 

Good to see all the names written down like that. It would be such a poor do if we don't get a couple of top-class left wingers out of that pool.

 

Brentford and Bournemouth both only having 1 English player today.

 

Brighton and Brentford both ended their matches with no English players on the pitch for them

 

No Engloah starters for Man United tonight.

 

Little bit surprised that Fitzgerald's kept his place on the bench and Jack Fletcher hasn't. Everything I've seen of the two suggests that Fletcher is the more striking talent.

 

Fitzgerald is the better footballer (by quite a bit IMO) but Fletcher is slightly more ready for senior football from an athletic perspective I would say.

 

I mean, I'll take your word for it - I've only seen clips of either of them, but Fletcher's passing stood out to me in a way that nothing I saw from Fitzgerald did. Anything you'd suggest I should watch to get a better idea of Fitzgerald's game?

 

Just had a quick check on last weeks fixtures and 30.4% English starters. I have to add though that other than Newcastle, a vast majority of opportunities comes from lower down the table. There was four at Villa also but other than that, it’s vastly inflated by the likes of Southampton.

 

No English starters for Wolves today. Five on the bench through.