For Gareth Southgate there was progress of sorts. It has taken some time to reach this stage but finally England have got to the point where the manager of the national team can go through an entire press conference without a single question about Wayne Rooney, former captain.
Seven months into the Southgate era a new team is taking shape minus the chap who has 119 caps and 53 goals for his country. England, as Southgate said, need different leaders now, even if he is still going to great efforts not to alienate Rooney completely by naming a permanent captain. Not yet, anyway.
For the time being it will be Harry Kane leading out the team at Hampden Park when England and Scotland lock horns in their World Cup qualifying group. Jordan Henderson, Gary Cahill and Joe Hart have all previously worn the armband under the new manager and, at some point, Southgate is going to have to be selfish and discount Rooney’s feelings and decide which of the candidates deserves the role on a full-time basis.
Equally it is not difficult to see what Southgate is trying to achieve if the allegation against England is that when it comes to the crunch they lack genuine leadership and players who can cope when the pressure is dangerously close to intolerable. Or as Steve Holland, England’s assistant manager, noted earlier this week about last summer’s Iceland debacle: “Maybe you were in the stadium, or watching it on holiday like me, looking round at the players thinking: ‘Bloody hell, they’ve gone. Where are the leaders? Where is the leadership?’ That is a pressure moment, so who is stepping forward? It looked to me like there was nobody.”
Kane, ironically, was one of the players who crumbled, booed by the team’s own supporters and warranting three out of ten in L’Equipe’s ratings the next day. One bad night, however, should not be held against him forever, especially when he has just won the Premier League’s golden boot, and Southgate should probably not be criticised for devoting so much attention to his mission of “developing more leaders within the group,” with the emphasis on the plural.
That process took in a overnight trip to Woodbury Common last weekend when the players began their preparations for the Scotland game by mucking in with the Royal Marines. Team-bonding, they call it, although Southgate was also reminded that, when Clive Woodward did the same with the England rugby team, one of the senior training instructors subsequently gave him a list of names as “men we wouldn’t go into battle with.”
The feedback for Southgate was not quite so brutal – “there was nobody they said shouldn’t be on the journey with us,” he clarified – and when it comes to Kane there was also the clear sense that the manager sees him as the kind of player who drives others on with his own ability.
“His goals record over the last three seasons speaks for itself. Even when we worked together at the under-21s, the quality of his finishing was clear. You see the level of finishing from the likes of [Robbie] Fowler, [Paul] Scholes and [Alan] Shearer, and you could see that level from Harry from the first day.There was the question of whether he could transfer that into matches because he wasn’t playing for Spurs at the time, but he’s done that now. He’s always had the focus about being the best possible player and they are the attributes when you look at the really top players.”
By Southgate’s own admission it is not an orthodox way for England teams to operate. That, however, does not make it wrong. “Eventually I have to decide: ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do,’” Southgate said. “But it is important to develop a group first. I want a group of leaders. Then, when we’ve got strength in various levels of leadership, everybody can see the importance of their role in the team.”
Plus Kane is another reminder, in a week when England have reached the final of the Under-20s’ World Cup, that England is capable of bringing through elite footballers. “Everybody knocks youth development,” Southgate said. “Our coaching gets knocked, our youth development gets knocked, our young players get knocked but why shouldn’t young English players be able to achieve?
“We have clubs searching the world to bring in young players, some of whom are outstanding but others who are maybe not as good as the players who are already there under the clubs’ noses. And if we’ve got a team in a World Cup final at that age group, why are we looking around the world?”
