Southgate’s young Lions may benefit from lack of pressure

Gareth Southgate has named a young, inexperienced England side for the 2018 World Cup. With expectations low, can the Three Lions perform well for once?

England the nation has a very strange relationship with England the soccer team. People who support the top Premier League clubs tend to have very little interest in the national side, meaning most England matches are greeted with swathes of disinterest. The World Cup is always greeted with greater fervor, but it’s very much an exception to the rule.

Even people who passionately follow the Three Lions have grown tired of their repeated failures over the years. Having a supposed ‘Golden Generation’ in the early 2000s made little difference, albeit their regular quarterfinal appearances look heavenly by recent standards.

The nature of England’s exits from tournaments grew deeply repetitive too. They would get through their group, perhaps beat a lesser side in the first knockout round, but go out as soon as they faced someone half decent. Often on penalties.

Since winning the World Cup in 1966, England have beaten the following nations in World Cup knockout games: Paraguay, Belgium, Cameroon, Denmark and Ecuador. That’s not a list which would strike fear into anyone. So much expectation has been rewarded with so much disappointment.

Unbalanced and unlovable

Their exit to Iceland in the last European Championship was perhaps a new low, though England aren’t short of examples over the years. A major problem when it comes to connecting with the fans has been their use of deeply unsympathetic characters which made the team hard to love. The unbalanced sides made up of superstars shoehorned into them didn’t help either. Gerrard or Lampard, anyone? Sigh.

That debate went on for a decade, and Paul Scholes got so fed up he retired from international soccer aged 29. Imagine being so blind as to cut off your wonderfully talented ginger nose to spite your unbalanced face that way. Yet that’s exactly what England did, and it didn’t get them particularly far.

But all of that looks to be at an end. Gareth Southgate has selected his squad for the World Cup, and it’s fresh faced and wet behind the ears. Perhaps most importantly, it’s largely free from expectation too. Can a realistic outlook ahead of the tournament help England to relative success for once?

The media

If you think the English public have a strange rapport with their national side, that’s nothing compared to their media. This doesn’t just apply to soccer, to be fair, but there is a morbid fascination with building stars up, only to take great pleasure in knocking them back down.

What makes it worse is the not-at-all-subtle racist overtones where black players, and most notably Raheem Sterling, are concerned. He really can’t do right for doing wrong. Never mind that he donated money to the Grenfell Tower disaster fund, or paid for schools to be built in Jamaica, where he was born. In the eyes of the bad end of the British media, Sterling is a wrong ‘un. While their treatment of him would never be okay, it seems spectacularly stupid right now.

Listen to what Gary says, English media. At a time when the England side isn’t brimming with top level talent, Sterling should be embraced, not castigated. Here’s a player who lit up the Premier League with 18 goals and 11 assists as his side won the title, yet he gets criticized for where he chooses to shop and eat, or for the body art he gets. As The Guardian journalist Sid Lowe wryly noted, if players were banned for dodgy tattoos, there would be no World Cup.

It can’t be coincidence the FA’s media team placed Sterling first in their excellent squad announcement video. As far as they’re concerned he’s one of their top men, but it’ll take more than that to convince the poisonous end of the English media.

Who knows, maybe Sterling will be so fired up to prove the tabloids wrong that he has a fabulous tournament? But even if it happens, that’s not the intention of the grubby newspapers who print their worthless, invalid, point-scoring criticisms of him.

This is a discussion for another time, another place, but the lowest common denominator rags which powered the country to vote for Brexit are the ones involved here. Sterling is just another in a long line of successful English sporting immigrants; hated for who he is, but he’ll be loved for what he does on the pitch if England are successful.

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Lowered expectations

But what are reasonable expectations for England anyway? The bookmakers rate them as seventh favorites for the tournament, so they obviously assume the last eight will be the limit of their abilities.

It certainly looks like a realistic aim. Whether they beat Belgium or not, England should get past Tunisia and Panama and get out of Group G. Their opponents in the last 16 would likely be Colombia or Poland, who have their strengths but would not present insurmountable obstacles.

But then we’ve said all this before. So why should 2018 be any different? The English public seem as underwhelmed with the team as they’ve ever been, but this might actually help.

Former players have spoken about the crippling fear they suffer from when representing England. Kieron Dyer played at the 2002 World Cup, and recently wrote in his autobiography, “We’re all scared in an England shirt. It’s one of the main reasons we never achieve what we’re supposed to achieve. That’s the England player’s disease.”

That doesn’t sound like a mindset or atmosphere which will result in triumph, does it? It’s no wonder Southgate wants his team to play without inhibition. It won’t be easy, but a lack of expectation from the supporters and media will definitely help.

While it was a different era, England had a terrible time of it at Euro ’88, losing all three games. Nobody fancied their chances at Italia ’90, yet they reached their only ever semifinal on foreign soil at that tournament. A lack of expectation can certainly work in their favor.

England spent the first 100 years or so of organized soccer wrongly thinking they were masters of the sport they created. They were actually merely masters of arrogance and hubris, and it can’t be coincidence they failed as a result. With a realistic view of their standing in the world game, they might just succeed.

The manager

It may seem odd to praise a manager for this, but Southgate deserves credit for taking England back to basics. They conceded just 10 goals in his first 16 matches, and have become very difficult to beat.

Spain, Germany, Brazil and Italy have all failed to win against Southgate’s team, albeit those matches were all friendlies. But he has carved a path that can lead to success; after all, a team doesn’t have to “win” in 90 minutes too often to go far in a World Cup. And let’s not forget Greece, who in 2004 showed how a limited team with a good tactical plan can go all the way in a knockout tournament.

Southgate’s team don’t have aging or injured stars forced into it unnecessarily, unlike squads of tournaments past. Whatever they may lack in elite talent and experience, the manager will hope it makes up for in verve, vitality and an actual desire to play for England. It will also be a valuable experience for a squad which should largely stick together for the next few years.

With the pressure as off as it’s ever likely to be, the Three Lions could do well in Russia. But even with low expectations, the media will still have their knives out if they fail. It’s what they do.