A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short article looking forward to the upcoming UEFA European Under 21 tournament in Israel in which five Liverpool players (Jordan Henderson, Jonjo Shelvey, Jack Robinson, Andre Wisdom and Fabio Borini) were set to feature.
As the most represented English club in the competition, and with England and Italy in by far the easiest of the two groups, it looked like it would be an enjoyable and worthwhile group phase.
This would hopefully be followed by a challenging knockout phase for our five young Reds.
It hasn’t worked out like that.
Fabio Borini started in the 1-0 win against England, but his energetic performances lacking in quality and missing good decision making led to a 78th minute substitution and being dropped for Italy’s second match against Israel, in which he did not feature as they sauntered to a 4-0 win against the hosts.
Nevertheless Italy have qualified and while unlikely to start in the knockout stages, Borini may well get a few more minutes, and given that he barely played in an injury ravaged first season at Anfield this experience will at least do him no harm. It would have been nice if he played better though.
England’s Under 21s massively underachieved. Against a far superior Italian team they were regularly outclassed and struggled to maintain any form of meaningful possession.
Henderson, Shelvey and Robinson all started for England and all three were poor. Jack, at left back, is only 19 and has only a handful of 1st team appearances for Liverpool and Wolves, so he can be forgiven. His mistakes were understandable, and given that he only made it to Israel as a last minute injury replacement, and was expected to only be understudy for Danny Rose, he will have been very pleased to have got a full 90 minutes experience in competitive international tournament football.
Jordan and Jonjo however were particularly disappointing. With the injured Lansbury and other players of the quality of Wilshere or Rodwell not considered for different reasons, much was expected of the relatively experienced Liverpool duo.
Their passing, along with the other England players, was inaccurate and nervous throughout. Henderson used his energy well during the game to help close down, but Jonjo’s lack of pace and tactical awareness without the ball was telling as he struggled to help pressurise the opposition.
Jordan again reverted to type with some far too conservative passing, while Jonjo reverted to type by too often trying the overly difficult ‘Hollywood’ pass and was subsequently substituted on 75 minutes after an ineffectual performance. Andre Wisdom didn’t get off the bench.
It’s hard to criticise the Under 21 team too harshly against the Italians when the senior team with all their highly paid, apparently world class, players were equally outclassed against Pirlo and co. not too long ago.
However, the 3-1 defeat to Norway in the second group game was a far more embarrassing result against one of the tournaments minnows. England beat the Norwegians home and away in qualifying for the tournament, although the Norwegians played rather well in both games and were unfortunate to lose both.
In this game England maintained better possession against a team that was happy to sit deep, defend in an organised resolute manner and hit on the break. And when the Norwegians did counter-attack they always looked dangerous and England were 2-0 down after just 34 minutes, following some school-boyish defending.
Shelvey was dropped, Robinson made way for Rose and Wisdom again was on the bench (only coming on for the last 5 minutes of the game). Jordan Henderson played as the most advanced of the three central midfielders, but failed to offer enough in the final third despite a few good deliveries into the box.
In the final games Borini was again a substitute in a 1-1 draw between Italy and Norway, while England’s awful tournament was finished in typically disappointing style with a 1-0 loss to Israel. England were the better team in the first-half, without really creating any clear cut chances, while Israel were much more potent in the second-half, hitting the woodwork and scoring the deciding goal.
Henderson started on the bench, coming on in the second-half, while Shelvey was recalled. Most interesting was that Andre Wisdom got his first start and was named captain by Stuart Pearce. Andre, who has captained England at other youth levels, was by far England’s best player, consistently timing his challenges well, and bringing the ball out of defence when possible.
This has been a thoroughly disappointing tournament for England’s U21 Liverpool contingent, while Fabio Borini may not play much more during the rest of the competition.
Even so, a wise player learns as much, if not more, from their failures as their successes, and while England’s mental fragility and lack of quality as a group was worrying, the Liverpool players will each have taken something away from their experience. Even if it is just that they still have a lot to learn.
You can catch more from me on my own blog: http://taintlessred.blogspot.co.uk/
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The only one to come out with any credit was Wisdom. The rest were very poor . Borini just doesnt look a player at all . It’s a worry
Definitely.
I was particularly dissapointed in Shelvey. He was given two starts and a sub appearance playing in what he thinks is his best role just off the front man. His decision making was horrible. So often blasting a shot when there were excellent passing options on. Unable to find space against Italy, or even help defensively as he’s too slow to press and too immature to do it intelligently. Unable to make telling contributions against weak sides like Norway & Israel. Jonjo has talent I feel, but he certainly thinks he’s much better than he is. I hope he goes on loan to Norwich (as is rumoured), then we can see what level he can attain regularly.
Atleast Zaha was equally poor (possibly worse), and he was Championship player of the year and cost Utd. £15m! Tom Ince (who his father thinks is worth £25m) was also poor, although I must admit I always enjoyed watching him play for our youth teams and was dissapointed when he left.
Fully expected this.The English press and Mr Darshan are perhaps the only ones surprised.Too many young English players are overhyped and glorified far to often and to soon. Quote – Hendo loads of ability and a future England captain. Zaha – extraordinary skill and guile – Sterling the next John Barnes and the list goes on.Truth is they lack technical ability and skill when compared to their continental counterparts.Case in point – take Liverpool – biggest representation in the U21 – loads of hype – Hendo starting to repay his transfer fee ,Sterling the super star,shelvey the next Gerard, Wisdom Robinson Kelly loads of potential etc – this may or may not be true in future but compare apples with apples – next to their continental peers they are miles behind. Add a mediocre Borini to the mix and that is why we ended 7th.
Hmm. Surprised? I was looking forward to it, and I did expect us to get through a group with Norway & Israel but actually the whole Universe thought that – except of course a couple of Norwegians and you.
Sterling didn’t play btw. And I have given my fair share of criticism of Henderson & Shelvey this season, while also acknowledging their improvement but they need to improve a lot more to be regulars.
England never learn from the younger teams to the main, it is always the same or similar problems. Even in failure media at times tries to find the “positives” e.g. Lampard, Gerrard, Cole, etc would make the Barca or Real team, so we definitely have the right players etc. These deluded theories have continued for the last dozen or so years (during watching of the England team), though recently such theories are far more subdued. With the U21:
1) we have a manager that was named “psycho”, not known for his quality attacking play and the guys in charge of providing us with the philosophy of great wining football are the likes of Gareth Southgate again a player known for his defending and in management failure at Middlesborough
2) the u21 team just like the main team are just about comfortable keeping the ball with in the defense n low pressure situations, when it is supposed to be that our midfielders and attackers are meant to be better at this than our defense even in pressure situations.
3) technically we always look poor even at times against the “lesser” teams. That is because the english mentally of quality football from the younger teams (youth team) is winning at all cost, passing the ball to the one or two quality players in the team that will score, it is not about playing to systems, playing the other team tactically, teaching all players to be comfortable on the ball and willing to take a pass control and distribute the ball even when you are being marked, we lack footballing intelligence as a team. We expect players to be big and strong too often and it’s an bonus if that player has great pace. Look at U21 spain, yesterday their CB Martinez is just over 5 foot 9 inches tall that sort of player in many of our academies would have told not big or strong enough.
4) other teams from the youth upwards seem to be playing to a certain type of system that can be tweaked in places depending on personnel. England at times look like they have just put 11 players on the pitch without them having the knowledge they are playing with each other as a team and not as individuals. We seem to lack cohesion, knowledge and perhaps ability to fulfill individual roles, let alone understand the roles of other team mates.
5) other teams because they play a certain types of system from the youth upwards, each individual at the very least understand his role when he comes into the team. Also because many of the more successful nations don’t impose a position upon a player at a very young age, they teach them to play different positions, those players once they do decide or find they are better at a certain specific position on the pitch they better understand the roles of the other players on the pitch; this is not as simple as defender = tackle, midfielder = pace, create goal for attacker, and attacker = kick ball in net. Understanding the roles of other players on the pitch means the team is more cohesive and can interchange positions in attack fluidly; though may want to impose a certain defensive form when they loose the ball.
6) we keep thinking we have a big guy who can knock down balls etc, a guy who can tackle hard, a guy who can run fast, a guy who can pass. This is dated to well before the 60’s and hope it is changing.
7) we need to impose on all club academies a criteria from top down for each player. That all youth individual player and team development must be based on tactics, positional development, passing, attacking movement, defensive movement and organisation, ball retention, defense penetration, all within a couple of chosen systems. Players should have relatively set position i.e. labeled as CB or CM etc from the ages of about 15-17.
Thanks for the reply and a lot of good points I agree with. Certainly the manner in which we played was not in keeping with what anyone would have liked to have seen.
The dissapointing thing was that England won their last 9 matches playing a lot of good football. However they were unable to replicate it in a tournament situation. The English 1st team is similar. Under Capello England stormed qualification for the World Cup but all of their players (except Gerrard & Cole) ‘forgot’ how to play to their usual level when the actual competition began. These players were excelling in the Champions League against better players than they face in many Tournament games.
For me there were 2 fundamental issues. 1) Mentally. Their is a complex that affects all the players (and indeed often the manager) when under real pressure wearing an England shirt. 2) Game intelligence. Too many players (Zaha, Wickham, Shelvey the main culprits) played for themselves with numerous incredibly selfish moments often because they didn’t see other options with tunnel vision, or did see the options but made the wrong decision.