England and FA should give credit where it’s due

WHILE many Reds are hardly that interested in England or international football, it would be hard for any true Liverpool fan not to have been a bit proud to see five of our own turning out for the U21s against both Romania and Austria.

With Wisdom, Henderson, Shelvey and Sterling starting against Romania, England had plenty of Premier League experience, with the latter three all having appeared multiple times in the past 8 months. With young Jack Robinson appearing as a substitute, Liverpool players made up nearly 50% of the England line-up.

Again, against Austria on Tuesday, all five made appearances in some capacity, with captain Henderson being rested.

It isn’t just in appearances either that Liverpool’s young guns are impressing, with Shelvey, Henderson, Sterling and Robinson all contributing to the goals in both games. The recently maligned Shelvey put in two impressive performances, with an assist in either game and a stunning free-kick against Austria.

Add the injured Kelly and Jon Flanagan to senior squad regulars Gerrard, Sturridge, Downing and Johnson and Liverpool could make up a full England XI themselves! Albeit, a somewhat disjointed one.

As I said, I know many Liverpool fans care little for England these days and the fact that neither the press nor the FA have really made a big deal of how many English internationals the club is currently supplying won’t help. One can only imagine the fuss that would be made if the likes of Chelsea or Utd were keeping the FA in business with quality players.
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The point of all of this though, is that credit really has to go to the staff at our academy and our scouts. I wrote sometime earlier in the season that the amount of quality players in our youth system was something to behold and it’s truly impressive to see so many of them eligible for England at some level.

With young footballers from the continent impressing this season, such as Suso and Teixeira, it’s looking more and more likely that we could have a team made up almost entirely of youth system products (to one degree or another).

Admittedly, there are varying levels of quality between all of those players mentioned and some will go on to greater things than others, but we certainly have come on a long way from only producing the odd Carragher or Gerrard.

Many of these young players look to have the quality to be in and around this team for the next decade. I don’t know about you but it might well just get me back into the habit of looking forward to England games again.
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