Many excuses have been made in the aftermath of the awful showing by England U21 - "We didn't have 'The Ox'" being amongst them. The absence of players valued at millions of euros (Chamberlain's transfer fee was close to €14m) is no excuse against a team with none of these players (no offence to my home-country Israel, but this is the reality). Just to give you a bit of an idea about how much of a mismatch a game like this should be: Israel's U21 team is valued at €6.5m, whereas England's U21 team is valued at €85m, more than 13 times the value of Israel's team. Norway's national team is valued at more or less half of England's. Only Italy, unsurprisingly, have a team valued higher than England's. [transfermarkt.co.uk]. This being said, this data is not flawless. It is definitely not impossible for Norway's national team, for example, to be world beaters in a few years while England continue to struggle, but I doubt the former.
So, if the players are so good individually, why did they fail so miserably during the Euro U21? Well, for one, many of these players are over-hyped (not to be confused with bad, just sometimes not great as the English media will have you believe). Huge transfer fees for young players doesn't help them, it's unnecessary pressure, some players thrive under the extra attention (Zaha), while some decline (Andy Carroll). Overall, though, it's pretty clear to see that when the media zoom in on a player/team, a decline begins: before the Euro U21, England won 9 consecutive games (including one against Norway), during which they conceded zero goals, scoring 22. But Italy would have been made by many to be favourites, why didn't they quake in their boots? The other group had Spain (9 points), Netherlands (6), Germany (3) and Russia (0). Germany under-performed, but in a very tough group, and while they are in their golden generation, it has just passed its infancy (players like Draxler, Gotze, Schurrle and Ter Stegen having already broken into the national team squad). While their squad does include quality players like Leno, Rode, Holtby and one of my favourite player, Herrmann, they were simply outdone by a very classy looking Dutch team, while Spain breezed past the group stage and, thus far, have lived up to expectations, as have Italy in Group A.
Some have blamed clubs like Man City (who have 2 English players in their best 11) and Liverpool (whose main targets have been young foreign players, with the except of Ilori who is part English), but it's not up to the clubs to care for the national team. If a manager pays more for a worse player just because of his nationality, he's doing his club an injustice. It is up to the FA to ensure youth development - learn from Spain. It is important for the youth players to be ready to grow, playing against experienced players is how it should be done. Barcelona B, Real Madrid Castilla playing against Villareal, Elche and co. helps them be ready when that long awaited call-up to the first team comes a-begging. The FA should integrate reserve teams into the lower divisions, it won't be easy to incorporate them in without damaging Championship but stopping promotion to the first division for them just like in Spain is the way to go. Man City's youth team consists of 31 players, 18 (58%) of which are foreign. I am against teams being forced to play English players at senior level, but not for the youngsters.
Brendan Rodgers does things well - he chooses players based on their ability, not their name/price tag. Sterling being played ahead of Downing for much of the season is a good example of this. If managers watch their youth team and employ this ideology, with the help of the FA, the English national team and the English U21 team will reach it's potential in time. It won't happen overnight, Rome wasn't build in a day.
