English hopes for future held back by dearth of brain power

Published on Sunday 10 October 2010 13:39

FABIO Capello will have allowed himself a wry smile when perusing his Gazzetta dello Sport this week. Federico Machedo's description of Wayne Rooney as a "coatto" would have been immediately intelligible to a man well-versed in Roman slang, but might have struck him as somewhat unfair.

Unfair, that is, in singling out Rooney. Capello would take a cursory look at his squad, with its various adulterers and sexual adventurers - Rooney, Ashley Cole, John Terry, Peter Crouch; its belligerent crusaders for the right to hear Phil Collins - Steven Gerrard; its casual forgetters of drug tests - Rio Ferdinand; its B&Q toilet-seat purloiners - Glen Johnson, and concluded "loro sono tutti coatti".

"Coatto", translated as 'chav' in the English tabloids (Scottish subtitles can reach for the equally offensive 'schemie') might be the default mindset of the English footballer in the Premier League era. Certainly it is more remarkable to encounter a player who doesn't subscribe to the prevailing counter-culture of fast cars, loose women, vulgar consumerism, sporadic violence, verbal idiocy and alternating appearances in a courtroom or a Sunday tabloid.

It's all part of the rich tapestry of modern football as a mass entertainment, some might argue, although real lovers of football will feel only dismay when reading of the latest tacky escapade by an England international. It might also be argued that it has always gone on, and we only know all the sordid details these days because of certain journalists' willingness to hack into players' private phone-conversations (without, ahem, their editor ever knowing).

What players get up to in their private lives is probably their own business. What it exposes, though, is a deficiency of even the most rudimentary intelligence that must be a major obstacle to England ever winning anything. "It's a thinking game," Arnold Muhren said, speaking for three generations of Dutch footballers. The evidence of the last 40 years of European football suggests that it is the teams with a carefully-conceived tactical style that prosper.

Gerrard and Rooney are instinctively-gifted footballers, their "football" brains often a beat or two ahead of their team-mates. It's apparent though that their careers have foundered, have stopped short of real greatness, because of their lack of a talent for reflection and analysis, an inability to absorb and comprehend useful instruction.

It's remarkable that Gerrard, at 30, and Rooney, 25 this week, have yet to find a definitive position for either their club or country. It's almost an extension of childhood and school teams, where the best player did what he liked and the rest of the team slotted in around him.Intelligent players, like Lionel Messi say, or Anders Iniesta, can make that fluidity work, adapting their creative and attacking skills within a team framework, because they have been taught to from infancy. Often Gerrard and Rooney look like disgruntled Scousers wandering the pitch and demanding the ball. It's an indictment of England's general lack of collective intelligence that Gerrard has been the national side's best player in 2010.

It might be apposite to compare Gerrard with his old team-mate Danny Murphy. Murphy is not as naturally-gifted a player as Gerrard by any stretch of the imagination, but his judicious application of his talents means he is often a more consistently effective one. He adjusts his skills according to team requirements, seemingly a basic skill in a team sport, but one many top England internationals struggle to master.

In Murphy's case, that stems from a keen and independent intelligence. In interviews, and in his occasional stints as a pundit, Murphy is incisive and original, with a quick tactical understanding and an irreverence for the game's usual shallow assumptions. Gerrard is a prickly adherent to the old inanities of "pride", "respect", work-rate and endeavour. Roy Hodgson's future at Liverpool might rest on the rather daunting task of getting Gerrard to understand the notion of tactical discipline.

Gary Lineker's BBC documentary last Sunday revealed the "secret" of the success of the Spanish and German national teams. The revival of stagnant sides reliant on sweat and endeavour came with the adoption of innovative philosophies from, respectively, Johann Cruyff and Jurgen Klinsmann. The essence of their approach was education, education, education. "Good control, good brains," was Cruyff's encapsulation of an ideal footballer.

Lineker winced in recognition of two characteristics that eluded English players. For as long as we can remember, England has been a football scarecrow, without a brain, skipping along the yellow brick road to failure. If we can dismiss the present generation as a confederacy of dunces, what of the future? Capello's squad features two exceptional young footballers, Jack Wilshere of Arsenal, and Adam Johnson of Manchester City. If Wilshere seems to be a thoughtful and calculating midfielder in the Spanish mould, Johnson has shown glimpses of a more traditional English stereotype, the egotistical winger. His manager at Manchester City, Roberto Mancini, has already implied he might be getting a little full of himself.

Johnson might find the stern influence of Mancini a useful steer back on track, or he might resent a manager who doesn't bow down and pay obeisance to the boy genius. It could go either way.

It's the same with English football. Unless its stars can discover a form of behavioural continence, it is cursed to remain a bawdy comedy for the entertainment of superior foreigners.