No Hunger In Paradise Read online

  He makes a virtue out of his origins, having been released by Norwich City as a teenaged defender before entering coaching, and working his way up through the academy system at Peterborough United, Cambridge United and West Bromwich Albion. It gives him an insight into the suspicions of clubs, who regard the England setup as a honey pot for impressionable young players. They are wary of players’ heads being turned by unsubstantiated reports that the greenbacks are greener elsewhere. Ashworth went some way to assuaging their fears by writing to 1,500 agents, requesting that they not attend training camps or games at St George’s Park, but he has a world-weary acceptance of the potential distractions for those on international duty.

  ‘I came straight out of club football to join the FA, so I can understand the frustrations. I have sat on that side of the fence. Boys are at a sensitive stage of their career. I get it, that player X tells player Y what he is on while they are away, but, come on. You’re not telling me players, agents and mums and dads don’t know what the going rate is. That’s not England’s fault.’

  Ashworth insists there have been ‘massive improvements’ under EPPP, but the numbers don’t lie. By his own admission, from the last snapshot available to him, only 5.8 per cent of the players in Premier League teams were England-qualified academy graduates. There is an urgent need for ‘meaningful, challenging playing time’ between the ages of 18 and 23.

  ‘Is it B teams, structured loan programmes, under-23 leagues? Is it buying a partner club? At seventeen, eighteen, nineteen we are as good as anyone in Europe. Where we struggle is we don’t continue that improvement quicker. In other countries they are in the first team faster, because of money. Young players are cheap. Some will sink, some will swim. Some will have a hundred first-team games by the time they are twenty-one and someone will buy them.’

  France have more players in the top five European leagues – in excess of 200 compared to an average of sixty-six English players who get such exposure – than such traditional powerhouses as Germany, Spain and Italy. Ashworth looked into buying into a foreign club while technical director at WBA, and believes others will follow suit ‘if B teams, or whatever you are going to call them, are not an option here’.

  He argues: ‘It is a shame that Manchester City, say, can’t do it with Oldham, Bury or Rochdale, who are five minutes around the corner, but from a selfish point of view I don’t really mind where these young boys get their development. I’d rather it was in the Premier League, but if it involves playing every week in the Dutch league or the Football League then great, no problem.

  ‘It is not a perfect system. We are tweaking it, moving it forward. It isn’t an impossible task. I wouldn’t be sat here if I didn’t genuinely believe we have the players and the processes for England to win things, for our clubs to win top European competitions, and for us to produce more England-qualified players and coaches for our top league.’

  The rarity value of players complicates progress in more ways than one. Like Southgate, Ashworth supports the introduction of a financially prudent bond scheme to protect the long-term interests of lionised young men whose six-pack swagger is exaggerated by premature wealth and unfiltered flattery. A wage spiral, without the constraining factor of achievement, can be ruinous.

  ‘Maintaining hunger is one of our challenges, because of the money that is available and given to young players who haven’t achieved anything. They have fantastic facilities, people picking up everything after them. They have ludicrous contracts at an early age, which are paying for potential rather than output. How do you stop that? If club X aren’t going to give it to you, club Y will. We’ve had some loose conversations, but it almost needs the game to come together and say here is a salary cap, or a bond scheme.

  ‘I also feel the best people in the world are driven by their passion, no matter how much money they have got. I am lucky enough to work with Wayne Rooney on a regular basis. Does he get paid for playing for England? No. Does he need to play for England? No. Is he there every single time without fail? Yes. Does he want to play in every training session, every single game? Yes. His desire, motivation and commitment to play football on a daily basis, as a multi-millionaire who has played at the top level since sixteen, is absolutely extraordinary.

  ‘We talk about differentiators at Premier League and international level. A primary differentiator is the ability to handle pressure, on and off the pitch. Public scrutiny is part and parcel of the job now, and some can’t handle that. What is particularly important in football is having good advice, a good agent, parent, and mentor at your club. We are all human beings and can go off the rails at times, but if you have a good support network it doesn’t half help.’

  England have won only two knockout ties since Euro 96, against Denmark in 2002 and Ecuador in 2006, so concerns about mental strength are understandable and crucial. Since Ashworth oversees strategic meetings with cricket and rugby union to discuss common problems, it is logical that he and Southgate share the belief of Eddie Jones, England’s rugby coach, that psychological resilience is not necessarily innate.

  ‘It’s very much trainable,’ Jones told the New York Times. ‘I think everyone’s born with a degree of mental toughness. I think it depends on your family life, how you were educated by your parents, what sort of school you went to, but the environment you go into in a team can create a much higher level of mental toughness.

  ‘You never stop learning. The fact is if you think you’ve stopped learning your career is over. Mental toughness, to me, is your ability to keep doing what you are supposed to be doing regardless of the situation, regardless of whether you’re physically or mentally fatigued. Because it hurts. High-level sport is uncomfortable. We try to teach players to be comfortable at being uncomfortable.’

  Jones admits he prioritises self-sufficency by actively seeking players from difficult backgrounds, and is wary of the homogenisation of development programmes across the sporting spectrum: ‘The reality of elite sport now is that players come through academies and are told what to do. You have to find ways of overcoming that, otherwise you end up with teams that can’t make decisions. Players need to stand on their own two feet.’

  Southgate spent time in the stocks after having his sudden-death penalty saved by Andreas Köpke in the Euro 96 semi-final shootout against Germany. He was sufficiently self-deprecating, and commercially shrewd, not to wallow in the indignity, but his paper-bag-over-the-head pizza advertisement never quite succeeded in making light of the enduring fear factor that accompanies playing for England. His stream-of-consciousness account of it is telling:

  ‘It’s got worse since then. Obviously I experienced it in my first tournament, ’96. I’d only been in the England team for nine months so it was an unbelievable sequence. My debut as a sub, my first game, can I get in the squad for the Euros? Yes. Can I get in the starting team? I’m in. Can I stay in the team? Bloody hell, we’re winning. I never thought anything about failure. I just thought, well, we’re in the semi-final. That’s normal, that’s what happens …’

  His laughter is impulsive and inevitably brittle: ‘Obviously, then I get hit with a hammer, a thunderbolt. I started to worry, what if I’m the one that makes the mistake? I can’t afford another one. In the end I was playing really well with my club, but every time I played for England I was anxious. Glenn [Hoddle] lifted me out of a qualifier at Wembley against Italy, and I thought, well, the worst that can happen has happened.

  ‘I think mental resilience is a consequence of what we go through in our lives, how we respond and recover. Did I have that? I went into Palace as a fourteen-year-old. It was a dogfight of a club. Every day was a war. I’ve had to deal with injury, what happened to me in ’96, being sacked as a manager. I’ve learned that whatever you go through, you’re still standing. I didn’t have that at eighteen.

  ‘Everybody is vulnerable really. I didn’t realise that until we played Italy in Rome, in ’97. I’d got to the fuck-it point, but I remember after the g
ame Dave Seaman coming in going, “Fucking hell, how nervous were we before the game?” And I thought, fucking hell, Dave Seaman gets nervous? I can’t believe that. He’s the archetypal calm goalie who’s won everything at Arsenal.

  ‘Then I started to look around before games and I’d think, right, OK, they are all feeling the same as me but they’re just masking it in different ways. I used to think strikers couldn’t be nervous, because what’s the worst that could happen? They miss a couple of chances. Whereas if I as a defender make a mistake, it’s a goal. But then Mark Viduka talked to me about the pressure to deliver, to score.

  ‘I started to see the bigger picture. I know how insecure everybody is, so why can’t I lead this thing? As a manager I know what my players are going through. It takes time to know exactly how they are going to be feeling at any time, and how much they can take, but you can get a pretty good idea of how they might react and the sorts of messages that they might need. You learn when you have to fire into them, and when they need support.

  ‘Clearly, there is still anxiety, from what I saw in the summer. Part of that is the fact the boys aren’t really used to playing these big matches with their clubs. We’ve got some very good young players but they are not battle-hardened. I suppose you’ve got to ask the question, what are our expectations? The outliers are actually ’96, ’90 and ’66. So until we really start acknowledging where we’re at and how much hard work we’ve got ahead of us, there will be anxiety.’

  The thought occurs that a historically dysfunctional system might have inadvertently acquired a powerful symbol of success achieved on existing terms. Southgate’s accession to an overwrought, over estimated job will not magically transform the raw material available to him, or remove the temptation to concentrate on the financial rewards in a celebrity-obsessed club game, but the best solutions are shaped in the shadows.

  13

  Alchemy

  IT IS THE ninety-third minute, the point of no return. James Ward-Prowse places the ball precisely in the corner quadrant, with the Nike tick facing upwards, towards him. He takes four steps back at a 45-degree angle, shuffles his feet, and visualises the ball’s flight towards the near post. It is aimed, right-footed, just inside the six-yard box.

  The routine is well rehearsed and the delivery feels good, though momentum takes Ward-Prowse a stride further forward than normal. The corner is met by Calum Chambers, whose downward header is parried. Pierluigi Gollini, the prone goalkeeper, cannot prevent Jack Stephens volleying the loose ball into the roof of the net.

  England’s under-21s have beaten Italy 3–2 with the final meaningful kick of the match. Three Southampton players have combined, decisively, on a cold November night in their home stadium, St Mary’s, but the achievement is collective, and has greater nuance than the result. The arid promises of the development template for domestic football are beginning to germinate, like seeds on water-infused blotting paper.

  A team under the interim direction of Aidy Boothroyd, who was to be ratified as England’s under-21 manager on February 3, 2017, defended with occasional incoherence, but they rotated fluidly, worked possession quickly and intelligently. They aligned traditional durability with technical precision and though a fifteen-match unbeaten run would end four days later, in defeat by the same scoreline in France, there was a sense of quiet progress.

  Under-21 football is the departure lounge for the executive classes of the international game. Press boxes tend to be sparsely populated, but matches are transmitted live on TV and grounds hum with the kind of pre-pubescent buzz that signals a successful marketing campaign. This particular group, being groomed for the European Championships in Poland in June 2017, are a rewarding case study.

  Successful footballers are not made of identical components. There is no magic formula, because alchemy is imprecise. Emerging players come from different backgrounds, use contrasting points of reference and have a broad range of motivating factors, even as they all retain focus on an identical ambition. They are, however, uniformly receptive to new methods and empathetic philosophies.

  Ward-Prowse wears the captain’s armband with unashamed pride, and transfers it to Chelsea’s Nathaniel Chalobah for the following game, on the outskirts of Paris, due to nine changes being made in the starting line-up. The job, and the gesture, is largely symbolic, since the pair are part of a players’ leadership group, along with Nathan Redmond, Calum Chambers, Lewis Baker and Will Hughes.

  They act as a bridge to management, and frame basic standards of behaviour that must be adhered to, such as mutual respect and punctuality. Coaches, in turn, respond to their input; Gareth Southgate, when he was in charge of the under-21s, acceded to their request to transfer training sessions from the afternoons to mid-morning, so recovery time could be used more effectively. He used the group as an informal barometer of mood and opinion.

  This, broadly, reflects the concept of a leaderful team, initially introduced at elite level by Ric Charlesworth, the Renaissance man of modern sport, who has combined political and medical careers with senior coaching positions in men’s and women’s hockey in both Australia and India. He has also undertaken development roles in New Zealand cricket and Australian rules football. For good measure, his third book, arguing that William Shakespeare had a coach’s instinct for the human condition, was written during a year’s cultural sabbatical in Italy.

  Since good coaches have a magpie’s instincts, Clive Woodward purloined his performance principles for the England rugby team, more than a decade before the FA recognised their enduring relevance. Charlesworth explained: ‘The leadership group was part of developing a culture for sharing and responsibility. In the end, the players make all the decisions and judgements in the game, and not the coaches. It was about developing people who were assertive, self-starting and problem-solvers.’

  So much for the old-school attitude, typified by the former FA educator who suggested empowerment of players would never work at junior level ‘because kids would choose jelly and ice cream every day’. There is a maturity of thought in the development process, invariably overlooked during the bovine stampede at senior level to direct doubt or assign blame.

  Ward-Prowse, impeccably media-trained, rarely skips a beat in more than an hour spent in the coffee shop on the mezzanine floor of the hotel at St George’s Park, where younger age groups mingle in a collegiate atmosphere with the household names of the senior squads. He has evidently inherited an eye for detail from his father John, a barrister whose London practice concentrates on family law.

  He is not one of football’s hothouse flowers, since his aptitude for the game emerged innocently. At the age of 4 he would kick balloons around the lounge of the family home. He progressed to volleying rolled-up socks, thrown by his parents, into a sofa, which doubled as an imaginary goal. He retains a vivid memory of catching the ball during his first game as a spectator, between Portsmouth and Norwich reserves at Fratton Park, and tossing it to a ballboy. Football meant a bag of sweets, strange sights and stranger sounds.

  ‘Things like that make you smile,’ he said. ‘You revert back to them in times of happiness. Mum and Dad let me live my life how I wanted. They were supportive, taught me family values, and I ran with it. I was given sound advice and never pressurised. Even now I still have bad times, where I struggle, but that is something for me to go back to, to realise what I am and what I have been through.’

  James joined the Southampton academy at 7, and maintained a call-and-response routine with his father until well into adolescence. ‘What are we here for?’ his father would ask, in a ritual enacted whenever he dropped him off at training. ‘Enjoyment’ was the obligatory reply, accurate up to a point.

  At 12, he was distraught that five other boys were given four-year contracts, leading into what was envisaged as a certain scholarship. In an early indication of the deadly nature of assumption, all were out of the game by the time those contracts expired. Ward-Prowse reacted to the implicit threat by toughening
up in unsanctioned supplementary training sessions at Havant & Waterlooville under manager Tony Mount, a family friend.

  He combined middle-class stability and a streetwise mentality and captained Southampton for the first time at 14, in the Dallas Cup, an international youth tournament staged in Texas each spring. At 15 he was playing for the club’s under-21s, being readied for the harshness of senior football by coaches Jason Dodd and Martin Hunter, who balanced life lessons with technical tuition and insights into game-management.

  Together with Luke Shaw, Calum Chambers and Harrison Reed, he was also fast-tracked academically. Allowed to leave school a year before their GCSE examinations, they spent four days a week studying under a club tutor with the warning that any underachievement in the classroom would jeopardise their football education.

  He was given his first-team debut at 16 by Nigel Adkins, who was at St Mary’s to see that win over Italy, along with twenty-eight members of the Ward-Prowse family. His maturity, at 22, is striking; he counsels parents of the new intake at Southampton’s academy and has returned the favour to Tony Mount by mentoring his son, England under-17 forward Mason Mount, who is cherished by Chelsea.

  What are the lessons he seeks to impart? He mentions the eternal truth of the motivational slogan on the wall of the home dressing room at St Mary’s – ‘Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard’ – before expanding on the theme of what it takes to survive.

  ‘Every player faces different scenarios. They have different managers, different coaches, to adapt to and impress. It all stems from that inner drive. You have got to want to get to the level. You can’t afford to think about other people. I lost a lot of friends through football with mates not making it. I have seen a lot of people come and go but that is the nature of the game, unfortunately.