DEATH, TAXES and complaints about England’s performances at major tournaments are, it seems, the only certainties in life these days.
The biggest surprise is the perpetual sense of surprise.
The discourse surrounding the matches against Serbia and Denmark feels like a variation of the debates that have happened at every major tournament in which England have been involved, including 1966, when Alf Ramsey’s ‘wingless wonders’ triumphed, and star striker Jimmy Greaves was sensationally omitted from the final.
“I danced around the pitch with everyone else but even in this moment of triumph and great happiness, deep down I felt my sadness,” Greaves wrote in his autobiography years later. “Throughout my years as a professional footballer, I had dreamed of playing in a World Cup final. I had missed out on the match of a lifetime and it hurt.”
Dropping Greaves back then was the equivalent of leaving out Harry Kane now.
The Tottenham legend had played all three group games but picked an injury in the third match against France, and his replacement, Geoff Hurst, scored the winner in the quarters against Argentina.
Greaves was back fit in time for the final, but Ramsey opted against changing a winning team.
The Essex-born forward was England’s all-time top scorer at that point, finishing his career with 44 goals in 57 internationals, including six hat-tricks.
He was just 26 at the 1966 World Cup but played only three more games for England after the tournament.
He retired at the age of 30 — the same age Kane is now — and struggled with alcoholism.
A 2003 piece in The Guardian to coincide with the release of Greaves’ autobiography is headlined ‘I lost the seventies completely’ and describes how he went from “a superbly honed athlete in 1970 to sunken-eyed alcoholic in 1972″.
Harsh as it may have been, the decision to leave out Greaves amid his country’s finest footballing hour was a bold move that paid off — Hurst was England’s hat-trick hero as they beat West Germany 4-2 in the final.
Perhaps the lesson that can be taken from that triumph is the need to make tough, unsentimental decisions to be successful at the highest level.
Ramsey also brought innovation and tactical expertise to the England setup.
A piece on the National Football Museum’s website highlights the iconic manager’s attributes.
“Ramsey was seen by many as England’s first ‘proper’ manager; taking over issues including squad selection that had previously been overseen by a board of selectors. By the time of the World Cup in 1966, Ramsey had a squad who, with young captain Bobby Moore in the heart of defence, were fluent in switching styles to confound the opposition. The team became known as the ‘wingless wonders’ thanks to a narrow 4-4-2 with a packed, direct midfield (as they played famously in the final, with Alan Ball running tirelessly in the centre), but in many of the previous games Ramsey had employed a 4-3-3 with more width, with John Connelly, Terry Paine and Ian Callaghan all appearing in wide positions during the tournament.
“Ramsey’s modern tactical approach was complemented by a strictness that demanded a high standard of performance and reliability both on and off the pitch. There was little room for star treatment in Ramsey’s England squads, and the stress he placed on physical fitness was as important as tactical understanding.”
Yet in the ensuing six decades, English football has too often failed to heed the lessons of their greatest moment.
Instead, individual star power has invariably trumped tactical sophistication.
Glenn Hoddle won 53 caps for England, but many felt a player of his talent should have featured more often and that coaches could have built the team around him.
Hoddle was a classic, creative number 10 who did not easily fit into the Three Lions’ system.
“We just didn’t have that structure with England,” Hoddle later recalled. “We were just told we’d be playing 4-4-2 every time, and those who were playing well for their clubs were dropped into that formation however worked best. For every team overseas, clubs and countries, the number 10 was the most important player on the pitch. That was never the case with England — we didn’t even have a number 10 position.”
Hoddle himself was one of the few post-Ramsey England coaches to reject 4-4-2.
The Spurs legend preferred 3-5-2. The lineup in their famous World Cup last-16 match with Argentina was as follows: David Seaman; Sol Campbell, Tony Adams, Gary Neville; Darren Anderton, Graeme Le Saux; Paul Ince, David Beckham, Paul Scholes; Alan Shearer, Michael Owen.
Like Ramsey, Hoddle was not afraid to make controversial and unpopular decisions. For the opening games of that World Cup, Owen and Beckham were on the bench despite a public clamour for both to be in the starting XI.
A version of Hoddle’s experimentation continued under Kevin Keegan, as this passage, ahead of their Euro 2000 clash with Portugal, from the BBC Sport website illustrates:
“Kevin Keegan has told his squad who will play in Monday night’s game with Portugal and Radio 5′s Mike Ingham says he knows the line-up after speaking to an unnamed England player.
“Although this is yet to be confirmed, Keegan has apparently opted for a basic 4-4-2 formation but the team have been asked to change to 3-5-2 when they have the ball.
“By going with this line-up Keegan hopes to get the best out of Steve McManaman who will be given freedom to roam when England attack but will then help contain Luis Figo when Portugal have the ball.
“Paul Ince, Paul Scholes and David Beckham complete the midfield with Alan Shearer and Michael Owen playing in front of them.”
England lost 3-2 and Figo scored, so the plans to contain the Portuguese star did not go well.
But since the Sven Goran Eriksson era, England’s tactics and selection have often seemed mired in a conservatism that defied logic.
The 4-4-2 that Ramsey succeeded with at the 1966 World Cup was still regularly employed.
But there was no Greaves figure unexpectedly cast aside. Instead, the opposite approach was instigated — it seemed as if England’s stars were undroppable.
Paul Scholes was ludicrously moved to the left wing to accommodate Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in the centre. David Beckham was an automatic starter on the right no matter how poorly he performed.
England did switch to a five-man midfield in the latter part of the Eriksson era, with Michael Carrick joining Gerrard and Lampard in the centre but the same big-name players were always accommodated.
Eriksson’s successor Steve McClaren did try dropping the team captain, Beckham. But tellingly, the winger was back in the squad by the end of the coach’s tenure as England embarrassingly crashed out of Euro 2008 at the qualification stage amid a dismal 3-2 loss to Croatia.
The theme of tactical coherence being sacrificed to prioritise stars’ egoes is a recurring one in modern English football history right up to the present day.
Declan Rice, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane are among the best footballers in the world.
Yet there is a lack of balance in the England team. Football is about picking the most effective system — not necessarily the best players.
France, to cite another example, won the 1998 World Cup without Eric Cantona and David Ginola, who had been exiled from the squad despite being among the world’s best players in that era.
Southgate needs to be similarly ruthless in choosing team selection and tactics.
Yet whether the embattled coach will make the necessary changes remains to be seen.
There was another eye-catching passage in the late Greaves’ interview, mentioned above, from 2003.
“The interesting fact about the World Cup in ’66 is that when we won it, it was quite a low-key affair,” he said. “If we won it now, the country would come to a stop for a week and every player would become an immediate superstar. When we won it in ’66, everybody cheered, a few thousand came out to say ‘well done,’ and within a week everybody had disappeared, we’d all gone on our way and we’d started playing the next season. That was the end of it. Now you get all this aura surrounding ’66, but it was never quite like that.”
That is perhaps an oft-overlooked aspect of why Ramsey felt free to make such bold and controversial decisions.
There was conceivably less at stake. It simply did not matter as much in the eyes of many. By contrast, the media scrutiny and pressure on modern English players and managers to perform is relentless, inescapable and seemingly overwhelming.
