Joe Gomez was named Man of the Match for the way he handled Neymar in England’s goalless draw at home to Brazil last Tuesday. But it wasn’t the player’s form for Liverpool that got him on the pitch.
Gomez took the field at Wembley with only 14 Premier League games behind him, and a total of 22 matches for Liverpool. This in itself would surely be insufficient for an international call-up to a team preparing for a World Cup. But as coach Gareth Southgate emphasised after the game, “Gomez is one of the successes of our system.”
He has come all the way through England’s youth ranks, from Under-16s, to being a key part of the Under-17 team that won the European title, to captaining the Under-21s. Southgate, then, had seen plenty of what the player was capable of, and was happy to bring him in for his first senior international start, even against such illustrious and dangerous opposition.
The criteria, then, has changed. Previously, unless you were Theo Walcott and the year was 2006, Premier League performances were the gateway to the England side. Now England have ‘a system,’ a process of player development that brings them through the ranks of youth side all the way to the highest level. England have suddenly gone South American.
The motives are a little different. We are talking about cultures on opposite sides of the globalisation debate. The vast majority of English youngsters stay in England, but have problems being promoted to the first team of Premier League clubs because of the presence of so many big names from the four corners of the globe.
South America, meanwhile, exports talent, scattering it all over the world. When the time comes to pick a national team, how do you compare performances in Spain with those in Russia or Mexico? Because of this difficulty, a key guide to a player’s potential is the form he shows with the Under-20s.
An obvious example is Argentina’s Javier Mascherano. At the start of 2003, he looked highly impressive in the South American Under-20 Championship. A midfield tiger who marked tight and passed well, he seemed to grow with the importance of the occasion. Argentina quickly realised that they had something special on their hands.
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Six months later he made his debut for the senior Argentina side. At the time he had not even played a single game for River Plate, his club side. But Argentina knew what he could do. Within a year it was impossible to imagine an Argentine line-up without him. And all these seasons later, he is still there.
Mascherano is a product of the golden age of Argentina Under-20 football. Between 1995 and 2007 they won the world title at the level on five occasions, and kept on churning out players for the senior side. Thereafter Argentina fell back, and Uruguay took their place.
Uruguay’s needs are even greater. A population of little more than three million brings inevitable limitations. It means that domestic football will not be of a high standard, and that good players will be sold early. For more than a decade now Uruguay have countered these problems by using their youth ranks to identity and develop those with the potential to hold their own at the highest level. Uruguay have managed to qualify for three consecutive World Cups by renewing their squad with a constant stream of Under-20 graduates – and in the last few months, two of them have changed the entire philosophy of the team.
For a decade now, Uruguay have been a hang-on-and-hope team. Solid defence, rugged midfield and star strikers – first Diego Forlan, then Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani, to take advantage of scraps on the counter-attack. But in the last three rounds of World Cup qualification and the recent two friendlies, they have shown something completely different: a midfield capable of retaining the ball, working interesting passing patterns, protecting the defence and linking up with the attack.
This dramatic – and highly pleasing – switch is the product of the promotion to the senior team of two members of this year’s Under-20 side - Federico Valverde of Real Madrid, on loan at Deportivo La Coruna, and Rodrigo Bentancur, recently signed by Juventus.
This pair hold out the promise of a Uruguay side that can go to Russia not just to out-smart the opposition, but to out-play them as well. And the responsibility heaped on the young shoulders of Valverde and Bentancur has little to do with their recent displays at club level. The change has been planned, because Uruguay were already well aware of their capabilities - all based on progress through the youth system.
Perhaps next year Joe Gomez will have the task of defending against moves orchestrated by Valverde and Bentancur in a battle of England’s youth system versus Uruguay’s.
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