The 2017 European Under-21 Championship is approaching, which means that so too is a familiar debate: why are age-qualified senior internationals not being dropped down into Aidy Boothroyd’s squad for the tournament in Poland?
At the moment, this discussion is centred solely on Marcus Rashford. As recently as Wednesday, Gareth Southgate was accused of appeasing Jose Mourinho by selecting the young forward for the England senior team’s clash with Scotland, thereby ruling him out of U21 involvement. Naturally, Southgate was dismissive.
But as the competition approaches, the conversation will deepen. Any player born after 1 January 1994 is eligible to take part in Poland, meaning that Eric Dier, John Stones, Dele Alli and Raheem Sterling all qualify. At some point within the next two weeks, it will be suggested that at least one of those players should have made the trip, too. If England fail to emerge from their group (which contains Poland, Slovakia, Sweden), expect it to be suggested very loudly indeed.
This is not a cut-and-dried issue, because other countries have dropped senior talent back down a level in the past. This year, Spain will include Gerard Deulofeu, Saul Niguez, Inaki Williams and Hector Bellerin in their U21 squad, despite all having been capped at a higher level. Similarly, Serge Gnabry, Ricardo Horta, Max Meyer, Jonathan Tah and Bartosz Kapustka will all represent their respective nations despite having won senior honours.
England are in a vulnerable position. Because the national team has performed so poorly for so long, there exists a temptation to second-guess every step they make within the international arena - at any level. One of the most common arguments in support of the inclusion of capped players centres on the suggestion that strengthening these U21 teams creates a higher chance of success. Winning an international tournament at this level, it is claimed, fosters a winning mentality and helps a player gather all sorts of useful intangibles which can be exploited later in his career.
It sounds reasonable, but there is little evidence to suggest that it is actually true. Looking back over England’s history at U21 level, there is no correlation between performance in this competition and its adult equivalents. Between 1978 and 1988, the Young Lions appeared in six successive semi-finals and two finals. From 1990 to 1998, England failed to qualify at all. In 2007, with a talented group, a further semi-final was reached and then, in 2009, they progressed to another final before falling to a talented German side which included Mesut Ozil, Mats Hummels, Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira and Manuel Neuer.
England peaked and slumped over those few decades, but without ever nudging the dial of their senior team. The positive experiences gained in the late 1970s and 1980s did not translate to silverware, while the fallow period during the 1990s eventually led to two of the more encouraging tournament performances in recent memory.
One of the reasons behind the absence of any rippling effect, presumably, was the senior side’s existence in a virtual vacuum. Nothing that happened at age-group level had any bearing on the main team: the tactics were not the same, the coaching techniques bore no comparison and, in general terms, there was no real sense of graduation. Playing for one team did not prepare a player to represent another.
That is what the FA has been trying to change for the past five years. Everyone is aware of what Dan Ashworth does and what his philosophy preaches, and this is one of the areas he was tasked with tackling. Continuity is a problem in international football, particularly in England. Squads have lacked the familiarity players typically feel with their clubs and their inability to adjust to those differences has manifested, more often than not, in disappointing and disconnected performances. Moving between England squads was similarly difficult as, with no native style, players encountered ideologically opposed coaches and tactics across the age groups, which inevitably created a degree of wastage.
The preservation of that stability alone is not reason enough to say that, in this particular instance, Rashford should not be travelling to the European Championship. However, what such a move would represent probably is.
The final squad is yet to be selected, but most of the 28 players picked for the pre-tournament training camp have been part of a group which began its qualification process in March 2015. That is a long cycle. Long enough for partnerships and combinations to be built, for trust and understanding to be developed, and for players who may not have represented their country before to get a proper sense of what it actually entails. Given that it would threaten those qualities, what purpose would parachuting Rashford (who has a single U21 cap) into the competition actually serve?
On the basis that the FA’s focus is on constructing teams and units, would his addition to this squad (with whom he has almost no history) at the last minute not represent a contradiction of sorts? Worse, would it not be a reversion to the progress-by-individuals mentality that has so often been proven flawed? Teams win competitions, not players; we know this, we recognise it in other countries’ success, yet bizarrely we remain wedded to the almighty power of the individual component.
Yes, England remain a perennial, crushing disappointment at senior level. Beneath the surface, though - recently at the U17 European Championship and currently at the U20 World Cup - there is enough substance to justify some institutional trust. In other areas, not so much, but with regard to team building and pathway construction, the FA might just finally know what it is doing.
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