England: Great Club Players, Rubbish Internationals

It would be a major blow to England should the national team fail to qualify for Euro 2008. But for this inward-looking nation of football fanatics, England's absence from Austria and Switzerland might be a blessing in disguise, saving us all from another dose of our 'world beaters' suffering another 'shock' quarter-final exit. The truth, you see, is that England aren't that good. And that's nothing new.

zoom - galleria Overestimating ourselves is an English tradition, be it on the football pitch or down the pub.

The fans are to blame to the extent that they buy into it, but it’s the media who repeatedly spout this hype every time a World Cup or European Championships beckons.

But look at the facts: England haven’t even reached the final of a major tournament for 41 years, and things don’t look rosy for 2008 either.

These are hardly traits of a world class national side, in fact we’re perhaps only marginally better than Uruguay, fellow faded winners of world football’s most prized trophy.

One cause of the perennial overestimation of our national talents stems from an overwhelming ignorance of football abroad. Open the newspapers or head to the websites of Britain’s mainstream football media and you will discover precious little coverage of foreign football. This is in stark contrast to France, Germany or Italy, for example.

Fixated on our own (admittedly very high quality) Premier League, the tendency has long been to rubbish what transpires overseas – players abroad who aren’t at Barcelona, Real Madrid or either of the Milan sides are often deemed inferior. If they were good enough, they’d be playing over here.

But do we really kid ourselves that the knowledgeable nations of world football marvel at our players in the same manner we do, that the talk in cafés in São Paulo, Madrid or Rome is of Ashley Cole or Frank Lampard?

This ignorance – some would say arrogance – has cost England many times in the past. Before the first of England’s recent qualifiers with Russia, captain John Terry was unable to name a single Russian player. Painful as it may be, he’ll presumably have no problem remembering who Roman Pavlyuchenko is now.

The abuse that Owen Hargreaves used to receive in an England shirt is another case in point. Deployed anywhere but his strongest position by Sven, English fans would jeer Hargreaves, labelling him substandard, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the guy must have had some talent to win the Champions League and start for Bayern Munich every week.

One outstanding World Cup and a £17m move to Manchester United later, Hargreaves is viewed by most as a ‘must’ in England’s starting line-up. It’s not his abilities that have changed, merely that he’s now visible to a media and public so intensely focused on domestic football.

It is perhaps this fear of being forgotten by the fans that prevents some English talents from hopping off abroad. Beckham managed it, but he wouldn’t have been forgotten if he’d sat on the bench for Dynamo Tblisi. With football an increasingly global game, the lack of English players abroad could be significant. We ourselves make a big deal of how ‘football is different over here’ and of how ‘foreigners need to adapt to the Premiership’.

So is England not lacking something by having no top players (Beckham aside) accustomed to the various individuals and styles of play on the continent? The French, Brazilians and Dutch have players based in all of Europe’s top four leagues. No, their domestic leagues are not of the same quality as England’s, but even the Spanish and Italians are now catching onto the idea that basing certain players abroad aids their personal development, especially if they’re from a country where competition for places in the top sides is tough.

Xabi Alonso has blossomed at Liverpool in a way that would perhaps have been impossible at Real Madrid. Italy’s Fabio Grosso swapped the bench at Inter for regular football at Lyon. Ligue 1 isn’t Serie A, but it remains a decent championship where he can play every week and enjoy Champions League football.

CSKA Moscow’s Vagner Love and Werder Bremen’s Jo are other examples: Stars for their clubs, their confidence has exploded and they proceeded to help Brazil lift the Copa America this summer. So what if their club sides aren’t as good as Chelsea? Surely their chosen path benefits themselves and Brazil more than Shaun Wright-Phillips’ almost permanent benching at Stamford Bridge does for him or England.

Blaming foreigners in the Premier League is a cop out. Good enough players command their place in the side regardless: Rooney at Manchester United, Terry at Chelsea and Gerrard at Liverpool. All English, all top professionals.

For those on the fringes of the Premiership’s biggest clubs – the likes of Peter Crouch or Wright-Phillips – their ambition to win accolades with England should be questioned. If they were truly motivated, they would head somewhere smaller offering regular football, be that in England or – if they want Champions League experience too – abroad.

But the dual lures of big money and a peripheral role in domestic club success ultimately prove too great to shift the inertia, as too does the memory of many a past English hero – from Jimmy Greaves in the 1960s to Michael Owen in 2005 – running back to Britain from a failed spell overseas faster than you can say ‘I missed the food.’

Those who have recently spoken in favour of footballing quotas maintain that removing such stiff foreign competition from the Premier League would prevent the likes of Crouch being restricted to bit-part roles for their clubs, and that this is therefore the key to obtaining a strong national side. Maybe so. But another thing worth considering is that great club players – as Rooney, Terry and Gerrard undoubtedly are – do not necessarily make great internationals. We’ve seen it time and time again with the Dutch and Spanish, and perhaps England are the same.

Consider this: between 1977 and 1984, English clubs won the European Cup every year except one. Just like now, the consensus was that England had the greatest league in Europe. Unlike now, there were very few foreigners plying their trade here. And how many trophies did the Three Lions bring home? So much for the quota argument