Caps for every Tom, Dick and Harry – nothing for Bonzo
By CandH’s top blogger Allen Cummings
As a West Ham fan the last thing I would have wanted right now is an international break.
I can’t think of anything worse, as we sit on the cusp of completing our best ever season in the Premier League, to have key players whisked away to far flung lands, while the world is still in the grip of a pandemic that retains a strangle hold on some nations and threatens a fight back in others.
We will all be holding our breath until the likes of Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal, Lukasz Fabianski walk safely back, virus and injury free, into Rush Green plus of course Declan Rice and Jesse Lingard re-join the squad from the England camp.
No disrespect to the likes of San Marino, Albania and other similar lesser-known footballing countries – of which there are many now on the international scene – but do games against opposition like that really compare to the fixtures of old against footballing powers such as Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Holland – traditionally powerful football nations who fielded teams littered with stars that made those games competitive and worthwhile.
There were far fewer international in years gone by, so winning caps for your country meant far more than it does now. England caps in this day and age appear to be handed out like confetti because much of the opposition is weak and the England manager feels able to ‘experiment’ with players who, when it gets to the important games, usually don’t get a look in.
Gareth Southgate has been England manager since November 2016, and up until his 49th game in charge of Iceland at Wembley in November 2020 he’d selected 87 players for his squads and transferred 84 of those to his team sheets – 75 of those actually getting game time and winning caps, 15 of which had just a single cap, that’s according to England Football Online. The cap makers have clearly been busy.
At the risk of being accused of bias, when I think back to former West Ham players like Billy Bonds, who never won a single cap for the full England side,Frank Lampard Snr who won just two , Alan Devonshire collected just eight while one of the finest footballers ever to play for the Hammers, Johnny Byrne, picked up just 11 England caps, even though he scored eight international goals, between 1961 – 1965.
To see some players these days who are mediocre in comparison, able to win more caps in a single year than those four did in their whole career, illustrates just how international football has devalued in my opinion.
Bobby Moore’s 108 caps came, almost entirely, against opposition at the highest level. There is an argument that today’s modern players who can ‘boast’, if that’s the right word, totals in the twenties and thirties because of the way international football has gone, devalues the achievement of the great man – and others like him.
Did anyone really get excited about the 5-0 victory over San Marino, or the laboured defeat of Albania?
The Home Internationals weren’t to everyone’s liking – but at least they generated some passion amongst the supporters. I’m as patriotic as the next – but international football these days simply leaves me stone cold!