It is the England debate that transcends generations: how does the manager fit all of the nation’s best players into a starting XI? And why is it the flair players who so often get shuffled out of the side?
Glenn Hoddle, who made his name at Tottenham Hotspur and Monaco, is considered among the first and most prominent casualties of England’s eternally pragmatic outlook.
“If Hoddle had been French, he would have won well over 100 caps, and the team would have been built around him,” Michel Platini, a three-time Ballon d’Or winner, once said. In reality, between 1979 and 1988, Hoddle won only 53. Where England managers have preferred industry, flair players have historically suffered, and for sections of the fanbase, that’s been to the long-term detriment of their national team.
A generation later, Sven-Goran Eriksson faced a similar problem. Paul Scholes, a key part of Manchester United’s all-conquering side of the 1990s and early 2000s, was the Hoddle of his era. Eriksson deployed Scholes in several positions, searching for a place for his undoubted talent in his starting XI, but the fit was often problematic.
Scholes was shunted out to the left to make way for the emergent Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard during Euro 2004, a position he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with, having featured there at times for Manchester United, but could not replicate his performances under Sir Alex Ferguson in an England shirt. Never truly establishing himself as an essential player for England under Eriksson, Scholes retired from international football at 29.
Whether fair and accurate or not, Lampard and Gerrard’s failure to produce their best form at the 2006 World Cup — it’s often forgotten that Lampard excelled two years earlier, being named into the team of the tournament — is often placed on Eriksson, too. Despite the Swede altering his favoured 4-4-2 to a 4-1-4-1 to incorporate Owen Hargreaves as a defensive midfielder, allowing the advanced midfield pair more freedom to venture forward, England crashed out at the quarter-final stage without ever getting going.
Meanwhile, more complementary pieces sat on the bench. While less accomplished and far less experienced, the then-16-year-old Theo Walcott and Aaron Lennon had the raw pace England’s attack sorely lacked at that tournament. It would have been a brave decision for Eriksson to drop one of England’s world-class players in place of Lennon or the unproven Walcott, but given the one-paced nature of England’s attack, particularly with Wayne Rooney struggling to recover from injury, it might have been what it needed.
Despite Gareth Southgate’s relative success, reaching two European Championship finals and a World Cup semi-final, a perceived reluctance to release the metaphorical handbrake and play their most accomplished forwards became a consistent line of criticism, particularly towards the end of his spell in charge.
Going into Euro 2024, Southgate had Harry Kane, the Bundesliga’s top goalscorer, Jude Bellingham, who scored 23 goals on the way to winning the league and Champions League double with Real Madrid, Phil Foden, the Premier League’s player of the year, and Bukayo Saka and Cole Palmer, among others, to choose from.
For critics, Southgate’s inability to find a system where they all thrived — England reached the final with only Saka consistently replicating his club form — demonstrated why it was time to move on.
But, after England’s embarrassing 2-1 home defeat by Greece in Thursday’s Nations League fixture, Southgate’s pragmatic coaching philosophy has never looked more vindicated. England were thoroughly outplayed by a side ranked 44 places beneath them in FIFA’s world rankings — and with three Greece goals chalked off by VAR, it could have been a lot worse.
For Lee Carsley’s third game in charge of the senior team, he set the side up in an ambitious system with just Declan Rice, a natural No 6, holding the fort in midfield.
Ahead of him, the aforementioned creative stars that Southgate often rotated during his tenure as England boss all starting together in the absence of Kane. The result was a disjointed performance with players — used to operating without disruption in threatening zones at club level — frequently stepping into each other’s most effective areas and Greece slicing through the limited defensive protection in transition. Sometimes, the best player isn’t always the best fit.
Finding a system to incorporate these profiles in club football is bold, but there is the time to make it work. Before Erling Haaland’s arrival, Pep Guardiola dominated the Premier League often using a false nine, surrounded by technical, creative players and pace and movement on the wings. In international football, the challenge is far more complicated. While Guardiola gets pre-season and in-season training and film sessions to drill ideas into his players, international managers get four two-week windows per season outside of tournaments.
In Carsley’s case, building a system that allows for his attacking talent to express themselves in the final third in the same way that they do at club level — with the protection of a solid defensive base to minimise the potential transition opportunities for the opposition — will take a lot longer than a few days on the training ground.
Where Southgate chose to prioritise a stable unit built on keeping clean sheets — England kept five clean sheets in seven games at Euro 2020 — it meant attackers, who had a strong claim to start like Palmer in 2024 and Grealish in 2021, often lost out. Though praised by vast sections of the England support when Thursday’s starting XI was announced, Carsley’s ambition proved to be more than his side were ready for.
There is room for the next permanent England manager to develop and improve upon what Southgate did, but Thursday’s defeat against comfortably inferior opposition is the standout example of why the former boss was comfortable with his cautious reputation for much of his tenure.
The clamour to cram the latest English Premier League superstar into the national XI will always be there, but as this week has shown, and many previous managers have understood, a more pragmatic approach might remain the best route to success.
(Top photo: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
