Written just after England's decisive qualifying defeat against Croatia on November 21 2007
Over the coming weeks much will be written about what is wrong with English football. Steve McClaren, perhaps deservedly, will take much of the stick, while the argument will continue to rage about the effect of foreign players on the national team. It will be said that the country is not producing enough young footballers of the requisite pedigree. This is not entirely true. Over the last year Micah Richards, Theo Walcott, Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor have emerged, Walcott excepted, from the shadows as outstanding candidates for the senior side in the future. They are all superb athletes, blessed with searing pace and in Richards' case a frightening physicality. They are products of the modern Premier League, a place where place and power rule, but what of their old bedfellow precision?
What is true is that England are not producing a certain type of player any more, the old fashioned no10, capable of operating in the grey area between midfield and attack, putting his foot on the ball and orchestrating play. Nowhere was this more in evidence than on Wednesday at Wembley in the shape of Croatia's Luka Modric. For all England's passionate bluster, their fate always looked to be at the whim of the diminutive yet destructive Modric. Until England find a means of developing this type of player they will continue to look pedestrian and cumbersome in international football.
It is clear that these sorts of players do not exactly grow on trees in England. It is ironic that Chelsea have been linked with a move for Modric when they already boast in their ranks the English player perhaps most suited to the role in Joe Cole. Sadly, for club and country he has developed into a left-winger who, though full of endeavour, spends most of his time doing step-overs on the halfway-line rather than influencing games where it matters. Wayne Rooney, like Teddy Sheringham before him, has the ability to link play but his style is more get-up-and-go and he tends to operate further forward for England. Steve McClaren clearly recognised the inherent lack of guile in his squad. He was in principle admirably committed to solving this problem by employing pace on the flanks, but consistently showed his weakness by reverting to the staid tactics of his predecessor whenever failure beckoned. He was a weak man caught between two stools, a decisive ditherer, whose reign will forever be defined by his inability to trust his own mind.
The last English player to really occupy anything approaching the Modric role at international level was Paul Scholes under Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan and initially Sven-Goran Eriksson. Under Hoddle, Scholes thrived in the now distrusted and discarded 3-5-2 formation, while under Keegan he was given enough license to score an international hat-trick. That said, even Scholes was not a conventional no.10, with his Ferguson instilled work ethic if not his tackling skills giving him a defensive capacity that would have been beyond a Hagi, a Scifo, a Modric or a Kaka. Before Scholes one must turn via the unfortunate Gascoigne back to Hoddle, so gifted yet so typically mistrusted by England during his playing days. He alone among recent England managers has shown any inclination to give the country's most talented ball-players their head in the final third of the pitch.
A look at the makeup of Premier League midfields is revealing. Very few attack-minded 'creative' midfield players are given license to operate in a central position. Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal is an exceptional exception, while the vision of Scholes and Anderson at Manchester United is supplemented by a tireless work ethic. All are shielded by exceptional defensive minded partners. Elsewhere managers are less forthcoming in going forward, with most play-makers accommodated by their teams in wide positions, notably Elano at Man City, Mikel Arteta at Everton, Steed Malbranque at Spurs and Yossi Benayoun at Liverpool. Elano and Arteta are consistently excellent, but the other two would undoubtedly benefit from a more central exposure in midfields that have notably underperformed this season. Seba Veron is an example of an old-fashioned play-maker who could not adapt to life on the margins at Old Trafford. Scholes aside, the injury-prone David Dunn at Blackburn is the sole regular English exponent of the creative central-midfield art in top-flight football. His manager Mark Hughes has also been unafraid to entrust the impressive David Bentley with a central attacking responsibility, all while maintaining an enviable defensive solidity. With a successful stint as Wales manager already on his C.V. Hughes looks increasingly the outstanding candidate for the England job, a man who knows his own mind in an increasingly fear-driven environment.
So why this distrust in the ball-player? Premier League midfields are increasingly reliant on the power of African imports, a trend understandable in the modern era as any team seeking to thrive in the Premier League must compete first on a physical level. Whether this emphasis on hard-running and harder-tackling is a recipe for success remains to be seen. It was clear watching Nigeria play Australia recently that, for all their enviable power, African teams too continue to lack a player who can operate in the style that Harry Kewell did that day, dropping deep and picking holes in the opposition defence. Their lack of subtlety is glaring, and it is difficult to see an African nation fulfilling Pele's phrophecy and winning the World Cup until they address this problem. It is worth remembering that the two outstanding midfield pairings in English football in the last ten years contained an enviable balance of defensive solidity and attacking nous, Roy Keane and Paul Scholes at United and Patrick Viera and Emmanuel Petit at Arsenal.
The standard Premiership midfield now comes pre-packaged with a powerful holding midfield player and an energetic box-to-box player who can score goals (see Sissoko and Gerrard, Essien and Lampard, Zokora and Jenas). Most managers are happy to see their creativity come purely from the flanks, whether it be in the form of a wide-playmaker like Arteta or the out-and-out winger such as Cristiano Ronaldo. The problem, however, is that a great number of these creative players are foreign: Ronaldo and Nani at United, Hleb and Rosicky at Arsenal. There are attacking English players featuring in the Premier League: Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Walcott, Young, Agbonlahor, Bentley, and Aaron Lennon are the most prominent, but with the exception of Cole and Wright-Phillips, the English fliers are at the start of their careers.
So what does the future hold? Clearly, the English game does not produce players in the style of Luka Modric, but Steve McClaren's successor cannot afford to bemoan this. He has pace and trickery at his disposal in wide areas, and must organise the midfield in a way as to best provide our wingers with the ball in the areas in which they can hurt the opposition, high up the pitch. Never again must lumping balls up to a big-man be England's sole means of attack, and if this means crushing a few egos in the middle then so be it. After all, we are at the end of a campaign in which England have failed to pass through Macedonia at home.
Whoever follows McClaren has a hell of a difficult job. Young English talent will continue to compete physically with Makelele and outpace Mikel but, for now at least, they will not be able to outpass Modric. He must have the courage and the judgement to clip the wings of the established and give his young wingers their heads when it is appropriate, as they represent the best hope of conquering the present malaise. If he dithers, he will quickly come to a sticky end like his predeccessor, stuck in the mud of no-man's-land.
