There are few players who could sensitively and eloquently offer their sentiments on England’s troubles at the World Cup, especially without sounding at least slightly condescending. But Xabi Alonso managed to do just that in a lengthy interview with The Sunday Times this weekend. His assessment of the English game is both honest and astute and, with regards to the cultural connotations of English football, he admits an advancement of thinking is required for international success to stand a chance.
“For me it is very important to have players in a team who complement one another. Sometimes the 11 best do not make the best 11. You have to have players with different qualities and, in my opinion, the England team had too many players who can run all day long, who invest a huge physical effort, who attack and defend – ‘box to box’, as they say in England. But the way I understand the game, you also need someone who delivers short passes, even if they seem innocuous at the time. That sort of player has been missing from the England team.”
Alonso was at pains to stress that he didn’t wish to come across as an ‘opportunist’ or being ‘wise after the event’ but his knowledge comes from being a direct factor in Steven Gerrard’s repeated match-winning performances. He reiterated that Gerrard is a ‘great player [who] inspires and leads’ but also that he needs players of different skills around him to play his best. It’s certainly no coincidence that Alonso’s departure has been difficult for Liverpool, as would the departure of any world class player, but the impact has indelibly affected Gerrard’s output. Especially in the 2008/2009 campaign, Liverpool highlighted the growing importance of a trident relationship in midfield (as commented in a previous article) of destroyer-passer-creator (Mascherano-Alonso-Gerrard). One shields, one distributes, one creates – and this is an example, not a perfect model for England to replicate, of players with markedly differing skill sets complementing one another superbly.
I don’t think it is a surprise to note that Owen Hargreaves was widely derided in England prior to the 2006 World Cup for being a player who lacked telling contributions in matches. His worth was underestimated until the competition began and, by the end, he was England’s best performer. There are multiple reasons for this: the international game is more akin to the rest of Europe (Hargreaves had the added experience of honing his abilities at Bayern Munich, where the ‘rhythm’ of the game, as Alonso later alludes to, is starkly contrasting to the English Premier League) and his role of destroying, shielding and simply distributing gained in exposure/acclaim as the competition progressed.
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When asked why, Alonso had no definitive answer for the English lacking conviction, sharpness and enjoyment in South Africa. But he did share an experience that goes some way in elucidating his point about the ‘rhythm’ of football playing an incalculable role in individual (and in our case, collective also) output:
“Since I joined Real a year ago I’ve been watching a lot of Premier League games and I think to myself, ‘My god, what a rhythm they play at! And I was playing like that too?’ And yet, here’s the funny thing, which I must confess I am unable to explain: during my first months playing in Spain I’d be more tired than I was in England. There might be a clue here as to what happens to the England players in big international games. The rhythm at that level is not like the rhythm in the Premier League and maybe it’s hard for the English players to adapt to…my impression was that they struggled to enjoy the game.”
This is an effect, rather than the cause, of something far more entrenched in the English game. Countless discussions have raged before and after England’s World Cup exit with regards to the emphasis on skill sets at youth development. To succumb to a generalisation, we place too great an emphasis on physical attributes at the youngest level. Subsequently the pace, tempo, and ‘rhythm’ of our football is far quicker than the rest of Europe. But the danger of our long standing affiliation to grit, determination, strength and pace is that technical proficiency degrades and, when separated from the complementary abilities of their club teammates, English players are exposed.
“I remember when I used to go to the Liverpool Academy I would ask the kids there what their virtues were as football players and the first answer they’d give would be ‘tackling’. Now, that can never be a virtue; that’s a resource that you deploy when needed. Your chief virtue can never be the ability to make a good tackle. Now, I’m just giving one example, but you can extrapolate that there are other qualities that should be given greater priority at youth level. For me the notion of ‘game intelligence’ is so important.”
This is certainly the central issue of Alonso’s argument and it all interlinks to the cultural tenets we connote to typically ‘English’ football. Our young players forgo technique and the finer, more cerebral, aspects of football (tactics, understanding how to play with our teammates, composure when faced with decisions on the pitch) and the result is a noticeable dearth of what Alonso calls ‘game intelligence’. Arrigo Sacchi used to say individuals could be great footballers but terrible players and the adage gains in meaning when juxtaposed with Alonso’s sentiments. We can’t teach game intelligence; it can only be nurtured, honed and experienced from youth academies – in a technically focused manner – through to the professional game.
“It basically means how to associate with other players. The rest follows, the physical aspects, the technical aspects. But understanding the game, that is what is most important.”
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Related articles:
Why is 11-a-side dying in England?
Is it too late for English youth?
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Click on image below to see the ITALIAN babes at the World Cup
