Sterling Must Be Ahead of Competition for World Cup Spot

Earlier in the week, Sky Sports panellist Tony Gale spoke about Raheem Sterling and his chances of making Roy Hodgson’s World Cup squad.  The former West Ham player said that, despite his form this season, the Liverpool winger is too young and it’s too soon to go to a major tournament.

Sterling has been in fine form for Liverpool since regaining his place in the side in December and has been so good as to force Brendan Rodgers to adapt his tactics and line-up to accommodate this, with Liverpool moving to a more counter-attacking set-up in order to get the best out of Sterling, Suarez and Sturridge.

On the other hand, Gale believes that Andros Townsend is more deserving of that place (there’s only, apparently, one ‘winger’ spot up for grabs?), having previously ‘done it’ for England.

Whilst Townsend was relatively impressive on his England debut and has had several good games for Tottenham this season, it would be very difficult to say that he’d ‘done it’ for either club or country.  The impression the phrase gives you is that a player who has done it is experienced, established and has proven themselves at all levels.  Something which Townsend most certainly has not.

Neither player has ‘done it’ and, once again, and English pundit is falling into the trap of ‘more established player = must therefore go to major tournament’, as opposed to the view most international sides across the world take, which is basically that the in-form players at the top level go to the major tournament.

How many more Ashley Young’s, Scott Parker’s and Tom Cleverley’s do we have to endure before a manager has the backbone to take the in-form Premier League players to a major tournament?

I’m sure that many Liverpool fans care very little about the prospects of the England squad at the World Cup, but even those fans must take a passing interest, even if it only regards the performances and treatment of our own players while they’re in Brazil.

Comparing Townsend and Sterling alone (which Gale appears to have done) shows one 22 year old who has spent 5 of his 6 years at Tottenham out on loan at 8 clubs, none of which have been in the top-flight, before making a handful of appearances at his club last season.

This season Townsend has been in decent form, scoring a couple of goals and creating another for his club, playing 19 games in the process.

On the other hand, Sterling is a 19 year old without a single loan move to his name, with all of his 62 career games coming in the Premier League for Liverpool.  This season Sterling has been in great form, scoring 6 goals in 23 games, with a couple of assists thrown in.  Sterling’s 6 goals this season is 1 more than Townsend has managed in all of his 37 games for Spurs.

So in terms of club form, it is clear that Sterling is the stand-out player, despite being nearly 3 years his countryman’s junior and has shown that he has the big-game mentality that England are so sorely lacking.

In terms of England, Townsend has 4 caps to his name with a solitary goals, whilst Sterling has just the 1 cap, so neither player really stands out as having ‘done it’ for their country.  So, sorry Tony, a dazzling performance against Montenegro at Wembley doesn’t really count as having proven yourself at international level.

Statistics aside, both are impressive young talents with pace, trickery and speed all in abundance but the worry for me with regards Townsend is that he has yet to maintain a run of form for his club and with the competition for his place at Spurs at an all-time high he is struggling for game time.  At the age of 22, he really should be entering into a period of his career where he is breaking into the first-team and cementing a place but his form has tailed off badly as the season has worn on.

On the other hand, Sterling is peaking at the right time and is looking more and more dangerous as the weeks pass by.  He tore Arsenal’s defence apart in Liverpool’s 5:1 win at Anfield a couple of weeks ago and has started to add actual end-product to his game.

At the tender age of 19 Sterling also has that special something that older players tend to lose the more the spotlight falls on them: expectancy.  Sterling would go into the World Cup as an unknown quantity and the lack of pressure on the youngster – much like Michael Owen in ’98 – would prove to his advantage.

At present Sterling is playing with a fearlessness that on the very young or very best players have and this could become a very potent weapon if England have any hope of progressing at the World Cup.

Taking players such as Sterling, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Lallana – and actually playing them – would show that England actually believe that they have a shot, whereas taking ‘been there, and tried that’s’ would show that we’re just there to make up the numbers again.

Only time – and form – will tell but on current form there can only be one contender for this elusive place in Hodgson’s squad and if it goes to anybody but Sterling it’ll be pretty clear that being established is much more important than being any good or, more importantly, being bang in form.