It is fitting that the club that has provided more England internationals than any other is one proud of its achievement. While some Manchester United and Liverpool supporters have gained reputations for holding the England national team in something worryingly proximate to contempt, their Aston Villa equivalents revel in the reflected success of their claret and blue boys in temporary white.

Villa’s 71 England internationals vary in popularity – supporters of a certain vintage are almost only unified by their love for the club and their distaste for Steve Hodge – but as a collective they are the genesis of a sense of pride.

Many Villa supporters hold dear their club’s ability to supply a steady stream of England internationals over the course of more than a century.

It is a sad reflection of the club’s fortunes in the last couple of years that of Villa’s last six capped England internationals, three have since moved on.

Gabriel Agbonlahor and Darren Bent remain but have dropped off Roy Hodgson’s radar, and one could make a case for neither being at Villa Park by the start of next season; Stephen Warnock almost certainly will not be. Emile Heskey, James Milner and Stewart (…)

This is the week when nothing happened in football. Well, nothing new anyway. This week He Who Will Not Be Named finally admitted culpability for his ill-chosen sentence construction and the dark heart of Europe’s simmering xenophobia yet again dispelled the notion that a black footballer can ply his trade without fearing the latent taunting from those he is paid to entertain. Nothing happened. Apart from rain gushing down onto a Warsaw pitch but even the rain shows a remarkable tendency for repeating itself in our shared cultural psyches from Noah all the way through to Gene Kelly.

Once the rain lashed down on Tuesday night, we were presented with the incongruous sight of four men in polyester suits desperately clamouring to fill in the scheduled broadcasting minutes with banal hypothethising. Adrian Chiles settled for his jocular Everyman schtick hoping to avoid the brooding rage that perennially bubbles under the surface of Roy Keane’s knotted brow. Down in the stadium’s underbelly, pitchside reporter Gabriel Clarke looked as if his blood vessels were under severe threat of bursting as he barked at anyone who wanted to hear that the whole episode was “a farce”.  As a viewer, I was just (...)

Wednesday 20th February 2009. That’s a date I will never forget. Toothache can strike at any time, but when it starts suddenly whilst on a high-speed train cutting through the barren lands of Castilla La Mancha in Spain you really are stuffed. No access to a dentist there, no pharmacies selling painkillers and none of those old fashion door handles where you can loop a shoelace around to yank the offending tooth out with.

I was heading to Andalusia, Seville to be more precise, to watch England take on European Champions and World Cup favourites, Spain. It was also the last time I would travel to watch England abroad I had decided. I had grown weary of the endless suspicion, the security checks, the hassle of travelling abroad following a team involves. I’d also got fed up of the way our own FA had been running the game at all levels for years so just decided to give it up. The toothache, whilst I can never blame John Terry personally for my current condition, was the last straw. Away trips couldn’t get any worse, could they?

There had been good times. Representing (and managing) my country in Macedonia (...)

The London Derby between Chelsea and Arsenal at the weekend highlighted perfectly the success Chelsea has had early this season because of its lack of width in the final third of the pitch.

Saturday highlighted again how Roberto Di Matteo’s side are able to dominate certain areas of the field, by simply allowing their creative players to operate in the same spaces.

Chelsea’s 4-2-3-1 formation at the weekend consisted of Fernando Torres as the lone striker, ahead of a very narrow front three of Oscar down the middle, Eden Hazard drifting in from the left and Juan Mata starting on the right. Further behind was also the threat of Ramires making runs from deep, late into the box.

The diagram above highlights perfectly just how narrow the Chelsea attack was with the most attacking five players all playing within an area no wider than 20 yards.

Yet so far this season, this tactic has suited Di Matteo’s side. Starting with Hazard on the left wing and Mata on the right – as has been done in recent weeks – means that Chelsea operate (...)

The English FA has made one of its most important appointments of recent time. The role of technical director may not be a sexy one and rarely a is news worthy one but it is none the less of huge strategic importance.

The Football Association have appointed their new man and it’s West Bromwich Albion’s Dan Ashworth. Ashworth, like the role of technical director, is understated yet quietly efficient and effective.

Ashworth has an extensive background and up bringing in football having played the game professionally. Ashworth continued to be involved with football after retiring as a player, working as an academy coach at Peterborough and Cambridge before he was appointed the technical director of West Bromwich Albion in December 2007. He had also previously worked as Albion’s academy director.

Ashworth is as responsible if not more so than anyone involved in West Bromwich Albion’s recent success, which has seen the club establish itself as not only Premiership regulars but a well-run, forward thinking club.

The ex pro who is also qualified as a teacher is seen as a key figure at the Hawthorns and West Bromwich are said to be devastated that their technical director has followed Roy Hodgson (...)

We’ve been here before, of course. The news that the Football Association has decided to jettison Umbro as the manufacturers of the England national teams kit in favour of the brand that owns it, Nike, has been a long time coming and should be no great surprise to many seasoned kit-watchers. Although much has been of the tradition and apparent permanence of this particular contract, this is not even the first time that Umbro has been replaced as the England kit manufacturer since football shirts started to become adorned with manufacturers logos in the middle of the 1970s.

Umbro have flirted with – and entered into a more committed relationship with – the England national team since the early 1950s. They took on the job from a little known company called St Blair in 1954 before losing the contract to Bukta in 1961. That they should have won it back for the start of the 1965/66 season may well, however, be the single biggest contributing factor behind why they have kept the contract for most of the previous three decades. The simple, elegant designs used by the England team between 1965 and 1974 are considered by some to be a (...)

Perennial quarter finalists, penalty shoot-out chokers and now the third best team in the world, well, at least according to the current FIFA rankings. The truth is, however, Roy Hodgson has few reasons to be positive about England and England have even fewer reasons to be positive about Hodgson.

In a way, Hodgson and England are actually the perfect couple. Hodgson speaks confidently; boosting his ego and image by regularly extoling the virtues of his thirty odd years of experience in management yet has little or no tangible success to point to. England, like Hodgson talk the talk but sadly not only fail to walk the walk but often end up tripping face first into the muck, rising with a mix of indignation and embarrassment, pointing , spluttering but never looking in the mirror.

The secret to their happy marriage is that both Hodgson and England are mired in the past, yesterday’s men who hark back to the glory days but seem unable or unwilling to change.

Hodgson’s rigid reliance on 4-4-2 failed miserably at Liverpool where he tried his best to sell Daniel Agger to Wolfsburg and decided that Christian Poulsen was the answer to Liverpool’s midfield problems.

The (...)

Last time England played at Wembley, the Football Association honoured its five centurions to echo FIFA’s commemoration of the world’s 100-capped players. Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Peter Shilton and David Beckham were all given or celebrated with a special cap to mark their achievements in the famous white shirt of England. But for many it is the least capped of the five, arguably the greatest of the England Greats – Billy Wright – who stands tall amongst even these giants of English football. His daughter, Babette Wright, was present on June 2nd to collect her father’s latest posthumous reward.

Wright played 105 times for England between 1946 and 1959, but even in purely numerical terms this tells only half the story. He wasn’t just another player to reach 100 caps, he was the first anywhere in world football. He played 70 consecutive games for his country and became a true English stalwart, playing at wing half and eventually centre half, with his tackling and effective passing lauded as recently as an insert in the programme for the friendly against Belgium last month.

He captained England 90 times, a record equalled only by Moore, and he was a renowned (…)

By Henry Cooke, writing from London

Prior to England’s clash with Italy at Euro 2012, Scott Parker was asked a simple question.  Would he be holding any grudges against Mario Balotelli, the man who had stamped on his head earlier in the season?

“He got punished for it and has obviously served his punishment.  That was just part and parcel of football, I’m not holding any grudges…”

Even in a sport accustomed to the sterility of the post-match interview this response was exceptional.  Are we expected to believe that a victim of head-stamping, the deliberate stamping of the head, the head, can be so benevolent? If one of England’s most aggressive on-field performers can neuter his opinions to such an extent, will we ever bear witness to the truth?

Well, here’s the thing.  We did.  It just wasn’t the truth we were looking for.  You see, Scott Parker wasn’t finished, he didn’t have much else to say, but his last few words were illuminating:

“… I don’t think anything. That’s just the way it is really.”

And there it was.  Laying amongst the gravel of media training, was a nugget (...)

Elite. It’s a word of varying connotations. Elite isn’t just good; it’s the best. And yet elitism is something altogether different, a wilful bettering of only the best at the expense of the majority.

Elite football players, of course, must operate within the framework of a performance plan, and the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) seems to fit that box rather neatly. Of all the plan’s objectives, perhaps the most noteworthy is to increase the number of English players being signed to professional contracts and going on to play at the highest level.

Proposed last year, EPPP aims to achieve this improvement through its changes to academy rules, from the removal of the 90-minute rule that theoretically ensured youth players trained close to home, to restructuring the entire academy system and imposing rules and restrictions based on which tier each academy occupies; the higher the academy, the higher the coaching contact time, for example.

Perhaps predictably, the seemingly sensible aims of EPPP are thrown into sharp relief by the realities of the changes for smaller clubs, and by the suspicion that Football League clubs were effectively coerced into voting in favour of EPPP by a supposed Premier League (...)

When England were eliminated from FIFA World Cup 2010 the period of introspection and brutal self-analysis began almost immediately. Fabio Capello retained the manager’s job in spite of both his team’s appalling performances and questionable conduct in South Africa, and the eagerness for change that was now quite clearly out in the open. Capello’s tenure intact, a solid start to qualifying for UEFA Euro 2012 brushed long-term concerns under the carpet as the average England supporter, quite understandably, looked ahead to a routine qualification and the excitement of a major tournament less than two years away.

One of the most damning facts that nestled in the public consciousness in the wake of England’s bungling progress in 2010 and ruthless decapitation by Germany was the now infamous coaching statistic. It was revisited by David Sheepshanks, the chairman of St George’s Park, when the centre was launched recently.

Two years on from South Africa, the numbers of UEFA qualified coaches remains a sickening reality check and highlights the disarray into which elements of the English game have fallen.

Spain, arguably the greatest international side ever and certainly recognised as the stunning culmination of a long-term project, have 25,000 A, B and pro-licence (...)

This summer the Olympic Games return to the UK for the first time since 1948 when London becomes the host city for the third time. Of the 26 sports included in this year’s programme, one sport which holds a lot of intrigue in 2012 is football.

This is not due to the competition being the pinnacle of a footballer’s career or because a host of big name players are taking part; but because for the first time in 52 years a team from Great Britain is competing in the Games. The last time, in 1960, that a collective Great Britain played the team fought gallantly at the group stage only to be pipped by superior opposition in Brazil and Italy (sounds strangely like many other British teams in international tournaments since I have to say!).

However, this article is not focusing on the last team; rather the very first side to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games. And what a team it was!

The 1908 Olympic Games were the first to be held in London and the people of Britain certainly got their money’s worth back then. Unlike the current games which last a mere 17 days (although (...)

As Scotland’s Andy Murray makes British history at Wimbledon, pedantic but understandable fissures in “national identity” will no dubt come to the fore again. In the aftermath of Euro 2012, however, the British Isles are more united than anyone cares to admit. Another international tournament: England are eliminated at the quarter final stage. Eire take a pounding. Scotland don’t qualify, Wales are never there and Northern Ireland’s just a memory.

It hasn’t always been like this but, last time it wasn’t, there was no Twitter or Facebook. No wonder we rely on Greece and Denmark to do the properly unexpected in the European Championships. Little surprise we need Brazil, Spain, Argentina and Germany to entertain us with authentic international tournament football. And how dare we claim, as so many BBC and ITV pundits have done over the decades, that the French, Dutch and Italians infuriate us. Summer finals glory isn’t a completely closed shop but, if you’re from these parts of north west Europe, you’re usually barred.

Following the singularly un-dramatic penalty drama of Kiev, the usual stats have poured in about English football letting itself down on the big stage: They’ve never defeated a previous World Cup winner in (...)

There’s an apocryphal story told by many a Cypriot coffee shop patron that originates from the country’s time as a colony of the British Empire. It so goes that one of His Majesty’s subjects was called into the magistrate’s court for having the audacity to spit on a shilling bearing the head of the sovereign. He was duly fined for such barefaced cheek but continued to shock his captors by repeatedly doing it in the dock until he was taken away. My grandmother is forever telling me how befuddling it was for her to sing God Save The King in Greek as she was growing up. Elsewhere in my clan, my Uncle Gregory was brutally beaten by the British military police for distributing anti-British leaflets once EOKA’s war of independence came to a head. He then duly emigrated to Britain and married a wonderful English lady.

Within these little snapshots lies the ultimate irony of colonialism. Despite all the upheavals and bloodshed and rightful pleas for freedom, my grandfather (and if you’re a regular reader of Dispatches, you’ll be familiar with his worldly wisdom by now), would wryly smile and say: “We lost all these lives to get rid of (...)

One of the most appealing aspects of international tournaments is the way that they compress the usual narratives of football competitions. The life cycles of teams are suddenly measured in weeks rather than months, making every moment so much more decisive – and the same is true for anyone attempting to say what they think about those moments. A pundit pulling on their opinion-forming trousers will find their musings proved, disproved, rebutted and rebuked several times over by the players in question before they’ve had a chance to get those trousers through the wash and back on their legs for a fresh round of pontificating. These hothouse conditions make a tournament fertile ground for being wrong, and here are just a few of 2012’s mistaken opinions.

Germany are unbeatable

Germany fooled so many of us, with their exciting crop of talented youngsters and a national heritage so naturally disposed to effortless victory that 16 years without a trophy seemed like an aberration overdue for correction. Throw in Bayern Munich’s impressive Champions League run, Borussia Dortmund’s evolution as the less smug, more embraceable Barcelona and the natural human desire for variety and it’s little wonder that the Germans found their names (...)