The Manchester City forward looked almost carefree in Spain and Gareth Southgate’s team need to keep this upEngland delivered an impressive display against Spain on Monday and it was kickstarted by a fine opening goal from Raheem Sterling. I was delighted for him. Few, if any, players have had to put up with as much negative energy from the media in recent years as Sterling and this was his way of showing that despite it all he still has what it takes to score goals for England.A huge part of Sterling’s burden in an England shirt has been dealing with all the critics. That is part of being a professional footballer but the scrutiny on Sterling has gone too far....
Gareth Southgate has been hoping Phil Foden would get more action at Manchester City but that will not happen soon so why not call him up for England now, with Euro 2020 in mind?Phil Foden has left enough positive impressions in the formative stages of his career that I hope it will not come across as too po-faced to ask whether this supremely talented footballer – and perhaps some of the people around him – can avoid getting too carried away now he is starting to benefit from the trappings of his industry.That is not meant to sound impertinent but perhaps you saw the photograph of Foden that was circulated via Instagram on his 18th birthday. Can you imagine the...
Manchester United’s grumpy manager should take a leaf out of Gareth Southgate’s England book and stop clinging to an old-fashioned, confrontational management styleIt is strange to think everyone in England was stocking up on waistcoats this time last month. Now the news is all about tinned goods flying off the shelves, which is probably because we don’t have the World Cup to distract us from reality any more.As a sign of how much patriotic fervour had taken hold of the country, there was no better guide than people deciding to dress as Gareth Southgate, fashion icon. Nothing in life made more sense than buying a Southgate waistcoat before the semi-final against Croatia and it was because of one man finding...
Great World Cup sides of the past have been built around ego-free forwards and Sterling’s cunning is utterly irreplaceableIn the minds of those who watched them win the 1970 World Cup, Mário Zagallo’s Brazil still represents the fulfilment of all the seldom-kept promises of international football. The mere mention of their star players – Pelé, Jairzinho, Roberto Rivelino, Carlos Alberto – conjures images of suave magic under the Mexican sun. But there was one player, a little less celebrated, without whom their triumph would have been much harder to achieve.Eduardo Gonçalves de Andrade, known as Tostão, was a 23-year-old centre-forward who had appeared fleetingly in Brazil’s 1966 campaign in England while still a teenager. Four years later he arrived with...
Managers of Belgium and England struggled in the Premier League’s long slog but are perfectly suited to the intensity and short time span of a World CupRoberto Martínez still lives on the outskirts of Wigan, his dormitory village on the edge of the Lancashire plain proving as convenient a base for managing Belgium as it was for his previous jobs at Wigan Athletic and Everton.It is already becoming easy to forget that the man who sent Brazil home early from Russia was practically run out of town while in his last Premier League post; certainly by the end of the 2015-16 season there were not too many Everton supporters sorry to see him go. It is quite a neat trick...