Whisper it quietly: England's future is bright

by Mike Martin

Sometimes the media and real life can become aligned.  Driving home last Monday evening I heard Ian McGarry of the Sun discussing youth development on 5 Live with Sir Trevor Brooking.  It was only the fag end of what sounded like an illuminating conversation but Brooking’s ambition was clear: we needed to produce a generation of players not only comfortable on the ball but able to understand and exploit space on the pitch.

The reason I was driving home was that I’d attended – having been persuaded by a circular handed around at a first team match at the weekend – a Pickering Town U19 match for the first time.  The side are currently top of their division – the Northern U19 Alliance (East), if you will – with six wins in six matches.  They beat Pocklington Town, the seven-team league’s basement club 5-0 in an encouraging and entertaining performance.

What was really pleasing was the structure of the side.  Pickering’s new manager Mitch Cook, the former Scarborough, Darlington and Blackpool defender, coaches the youth team as well as the ‘firsts’, which means the U19s are set up to prepare players for graduation to the senior side.  This involves the youth team playing the same flexible 4-3-3 formation as the first XI, with the front three encouraged to switch positions frequently.

This may seem an obvious ploy but it is far from universally applied.  The Dutch, who take youth development extraordinarily seriously, stick to 4-3-3 and variations thereof at all age levels.  England don’t.  At Euro 2009, the England U21 side coached by Stuart Pearce played such a system while the seniors were sticking with 4-4-2 under Fabio Capello.

Playing with a universal basic formation – though there will always be tweaks and variations; there has to be if different players are involved – enables a club or country to foster a footballing identity.  Everybody knows how Argentina, Spain and Holland play football.  The same is true with Greece, even if it is not nearly as watchable.  But what of England?

Part of the problem with young English players is that we have not, in recent years, taken youth tournament football seriously enough.  It is to be hoped that the FA, armed with memories of last summer’s ill-fated excursion to South Africa, will treat this summer’s U20 World Cup in Colombia properly and insist that players such as Josh McEachran, Jack Wilshere, Jack Rodwell and Phil Jones are released from their clubs to participate.

England need to find their identity as a side and it must start with the youth teams.  If 4-2-3-1, as the senior side have been playing of late, is the way to go then it must be universally applied throughout the age groups.

Anyway, back to Pickering Town.  It was pleasing, not to mention a relief, to see that the recent changes made to youth coaching in England seem to be producing the desired effect.  The Pikes youth team played with the ball on the floor, moved intelligently and passed the ball around well.  When constructing attacks, which were frequent and effective, there was always a player ten yards ahead of the ball and another ten yards behind.

It was also a delight to see that short, fragile players were not being marginalised.  Pickering, at senior and youth level, are not a big side but the ability to control a ball was evident in the U19s match, arguably to a greater extent than the seniors.  The ability to receive passes, as well as play them, with precision and composure is vital.  If the player on the ball does not trust a team-mate with an opponent nearby to control the ball well, they will look only for players in space, drastically reducing their options.  How many times this has led to panic in the England team at international tournaments it is dispiriting to count.  A reliance on a long ball game, now laughably ineffective in top-level international football as England proved so well against France in November, is a symptom.

Cook’s precise training methods are not known to this writer, though I was briefly under his watch when he was in charge of Scarborough FC’s Football In The Community programme, which provided a diversion for my thirteen-year-old self in many school holidays.  Yet the imagination need not be greatly stretched to picture many small-sided games, with each player getting plenty of time on the ball, developing a sense of competitive enjoyment as well as technical aptitude.

Pickering Town U19 may or may not win the Northern Alliance (East) this season but that is hardly the point.  The team proves that good training and a cohesive structure across the whole club is a recipe for success.  If this is the way English football is going, it is to be celebrated.  England are currently the European champions at U17 level and deservedly so, having outplayed Spain in the final last May in Liechtenstein.  Josh McEachran and Jack Wilshere are model modern footballers.  Perhaps the Golden Generation are about to be replaced by the Good Generation.