“We can stay calm in difficult situations because we can beat everybody. Even when we are not winning, we can change a game. We’ve experienced lots of situations, so we don’t get anxious.”
So said Toni Kroos on Wednesday referring to Real Madrid’s Champions League pursuit but truthfully he could just as easily have been talking up his country’s erudite strengths ahead of their World Cup campaign in Russia this summer. As always Germany are among the favourites and typically not just because they boast one of the best collections of talent at their disposal but for their masterful game-management and ability to navigate their way through whatever tournament football throws at them.
They know what is needed to be done in any given circumstance and with clinical and unified pragmatism they act accordingly.
It is a lack of such collective nous that is often attributed to England’s shortcomings on the biggest sporting stage of them all with a failure to adapt to a game’s changing demands leading to just two quarter-final appearances and little else besides since 1990. Too often have we seen the Three Lions roar their intention to fight only to find themselves out-thought. Too often the pressure has not been absorbed and they lose their heads and discipline.
Aptly it was against Germany in 2010 where these failings came most to the fore. Fabio Capello’s tail-end of a ‘Golden Generation’ flew from the blocks, desperate to prove that a disappointing group stage was a ten-day glitch only to be mercilessly picked off by an opposition armed with a nuanced game-plan. The sight of Gareth Barry trundling haplessly behind Mesut Ozil as Germany broke for their fourth will stay long in the memory and that is with no blame attached to Barry but more so because it was decided that England’s slowest player should stay furthest back for the inevitable counters to come.
Mentality, self-governance, discipline, organisation, and savvy: all were in short supply eight years ago and the same applies to a dismal and confused showing in Brazil 2014.
So why should there be cause for optimism that things will be any different when Gareth Southgate’s men walk out to the Volgograd Arena this June to open their tournament against Tunisia? Well, there are three reasons actually and they go by the names of Jurgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola.
It simply cannot be under-stated to what extent a player’s club manager influences not only the individual’s performances in a major tournament but by natural extension how the team fares too. Gareth Southgate will, of course, pick the side and determine their shape; he will give each player detailed instructions to be carried out to the word. But in the heat of battle, it is the thousands of hours spent on the training pitches at Enfield, Melwood and the Etihad campus – it is the thousands of words of wisdom imparted into the ear - that will emerge from each player. Every decision made in a tight spot, every intuitive movement, and what is more an inner-core of self-belief in their ability to prevail: all of this will be born from the minds of three of the shrewdest, extensive, intensive coaches in world football.
“We try to bring all the attributes and what we learn under Pep into the England squad,” John Stones admitted in March. He then stated the importance of the team remaining mentally strong in a similar vein to the positivity shown by Manchester City during their sustained title domination. A few months earlier Southgate praised the strength and conditioning work done at Tottenham, insisting that it decreases the chances of burn-out from his stars by the season’s end. Klopp meanwhile has previously declared that he is proud that his side has such a bearing on the national XI.
It is expected that just shy of half of the squad travelling to Russia will be players who have benefited from the tutelage of this trio. Their methods are ingrained to the point of being instinctual. Their mentalities will vicariously be represented in a national shirt. Given that Pochettino has moulded a hungry young side highly organised and autonomous in thought. Considering too that in Stones, Walker, Delph and a rebooted Raheem Sterling England have four recent league winners educated in Pepball. And factoring in also that Jordon Henderson, Joe Gomez and Adam Lallana are driven from the drive of Klopp we can deduce that naivety and hollow self-worth – two inadequacies that have cost England so dear in modern times – will be entirely absent for once. That’s enough to give us hope.
“We can stay calm in difficult situations because we can beat everybody. Even when we are not winning, we can change a game. We’ve experienced lots of situations, so we don’t get anxious.”
Those words were said by Toni Kroos this week. But they could just as easily have been confidently uttered by the key players England will turn to when its crunch time and an international legacy is on the line.
