Dave Kidd: England youth teams have now won FIVE major trophies in six years… but when will these kids be Prem regulars?
ENGLISH football has come on leaps and bounds in the last dozen years.
Take, for example, Ashley Cole — a man who once injured an aspiring youngster with an air rifle but is now credited with a key mentoring role as England won the European Under-21 Championships for the first time since 1984.
Cole was the world-class left-back of the Golden Generation who accidentally shot a work experience kid at Chelsea’s training ground in 2011.
Now he is an influential member of the coaching staff of U21s boss Lee Carsley, a supposedly underwhelming appointment who has proved an inspired choice.
Carsley has been flexible in terms of tactics and manpower and his England side were the most attractive and effective team at the tournament they won in Saturday’s final — which saw Cole sent off after a row with the Spanish bench.
It was England’s fifth major trophy in six years at age-group levels from U17s to 21s.
That is a ringing endorsement at the overhaul of youth football instigated by Gareth Southgate in a former role as the FA’s head of elite development.
This began with small-sided games on smaller pitches for primary-school kids, a vast expansion of the number of badged-up coaches, an increased focus on technical ball skills and footballing intelligence, as well as an imposition of a clear pass-and-move playing style.
This ended up with England’s U21s scoring some outstanding team goals out in Georgia and winning the tournament without conceding.
Spain and Germany were both consistently successful at age-group levels before their senior sides won World Cups and a similar pathway was demanded for England.
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So Southgate and the FA, neither of whom receive enough credit, have done all they can.
The problem, though, is obvious.
Will many of Carsley’s team be playing regular Premier League football next season?
Southgate knows he sounds like a stuck record when he continually points out that the number of English Premier League starters remains around 32 per cent.
But that problem isn’t going away, as the wealth of England’s top flight increases and the life-expectancy of managerial tenures shrink.
After England’s quarter-final exit at last year’s World Cup, there appeared to be no native players tearing it up in the Premier League and demanding the opportunity to freshen up Southgate’s senior squad.
The evidence from Georgia suggests England do have several players who are good enough, yet not experienced enough.
The key Manchester City trio of keeper James Trafford, skipper Taylor Harwood-Bellis and attacking midfielder Cole Palmer will not be playing for Pep Guardiola’s Treble winners.
Trafford, the injury-time penalty-saving hero of Saturday’s final triumph against Spain, has the brilliance and supreme self-confidence to be an absolute star.
All the more remarkable given that he has not played club football any higher than League One, where he spent the last 18 months on loan at Bolton.
Trafford is now poised to move to Burnley, which may ease his path into Southgate’s squad.
Harwood-Bellis, who has never played in the Prem but was loaned to Turf Moor last season, is highly rated for his leadership qualities as well as his defensive abilities and is a target for Fulham and West Ham.
Palmer has been on the fringes of Guardiola’s team for some time but is desperate for a high-level loan move.
Borussia Dortmund and Brighton are among his admirers.
Levi Colwill, surely the left-footed centre-half Southgate craves, spent last season at the Amex but his game time was limited.
He returns to Chelsea hoping Mauricio Pochettino’s reputation for nurturing young English players will survive the Stamford Bridge madhouse.
Noni Madueke, a talented winger in need of greater end- product, is also at Chelsea, where players have to compete for space in the training-ground dressing room, let alone a first-team starting place.
Emile Smith Rowe, the only member of Carsley’s squad with a senior cap, has gone backwards at Arsenal after injury and may need a move, either temporary or permanent.
Anthony Gordon, the player of the tournament in Georgia, is yet to nail down a regular place at Newcastle, who will continue to spend.
Curtis Jones, reckoned by Carsley to be the best of his bunch, has flitted in and out of Liverpool’s starting XI, even before a major midfield overhaul at Anfield this summer.
Angel Gomes has thrived in a deeper midfield role since switching from Manchester United to Lille but Southgate is, perhaps rightly, sniffy about the quality of the football in other major European leagues.
Morgan Gibbs-White, one of the first names on the Nottingham Forest team-sheet, has the clearest run at a breakthrough into Southgate’s squad.
All in all, though, there are far too many of Carsley’s players who have returned home desperate for transfers, or for assurances of regular football at their current clubs.
Because there has never been a better time to learn your football as a young English player, yet there has never been a worse time to play that football at the highest level.
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BAZ IT ALL UP
SITTING among the great and good of English cricket in media centres during The Ashes gives you some fascinating off-the-record insights and opinions.
Some well-informed ex-players believe that Bazball is like a brainwashing New Age religious cult, where players and coaches have lost all reason.
Others believe it is a work of genius, transforming the attitudes of players and attracting new fans to Test cricket.
If England win The Ashes, Bazball will be hailed as the greatest philosophy in sporting history. If they don’t, it will be condemned as happy-clappy claptrap.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
MUZZ BE BACK
IT’S 4½ years since the Australian Open organisers screened an emotional ‘retirement’ video for Andy Murray.
Yet the three-time Grand Slam winner is still going.
The Scot, 36, has hinted that his second-round defeat by Stefanos Tsitsipas may have been his Wimbledon farewell — but don’t bet on it.
Murray is the stubborn old GOAT of British tennis and he will surely be back.
THOSE who hate FFP rules argue they are solely designed to hinder clubs with ‘new money’ while allowing the old elite an unfair advantage.
Yet Manchester United face a tough summer window — because, after years of spending badly, they can’t sell on too many players signed for too much money on inflated wages.
Exactly the sort of thing FFP was designed to punish.
GREAT to see Steven Gerrard return to management and proudly waving the scarf of Saudi club Al-Ettifaq, who will pay him £8million a year.
As they like to say on Merseyside: “This Means More.”