Is this England’s best World Cup team since 1966?

{"text":[[{"start":7.1,"text":"I’ve been present for most of England’s exits from major football tournaments since Wembley at Euro 96, and the roll-call brings back memories: St Etienne, Shizuoka, São Paulo, Moscow, Wembley again, and Berlin. "}],[{"start":22.049999999999997,"text":"England going out — in the ideal case, against a former wartime enemy on penalties — is a beloved ritual of World Cups for people around the world. Yet this time, connoisseurs of the spectacle might be disappointed."}],[{"start":35.949999999999996,"text":"England kicks off its opening game on Wednesday against Croatia in Dallas with probably the best chance of winning the thing since its only victory in 1966."}],[{"start":47.599999999999994,"text":"No one should get overexcited. The data company Opta puts its chance of lifting the trophy at 10.9 per cent, making it third favourite behind France and Spain. Still, here’s the case for an England win."}],[{"start":60.8,"text":"The UK voted to leave the EU 10 years ago on Tuesday, but English football has been on a long journey in the opposite direction. "}],[{"start":69.55,"text":"Its slow-motion return to Europe began in 1993 after an England team playing primitive English long-ball football failed to qualify for the first World Cup in the US. That initiated a shift towards the European passing game. Gradually, youth academies stopped scouting big lads, and bred Europeans."}],[{"start":88.5,"text":"London alone has produced Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Michael Olise (who chose to play for France) and Jamal Musiala (Germany)."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":98.2,"text":"The multinational Premier League helps by giving the best Englishmen daily immersion in the most evolved form of football. The unfounded nativist argument that imports hurt England by reducing English players’ opportunities in club football faded away after England began winning."}],[{"start":113.85000000000001,"text":"Judged by players’ market value, England’s squad is second best in the tournament after France, notes sports economist Stefan Szymanski, co-author of our book Soccernomics."}],[{"start":124.00000000000001,"text":"Kane is 32 but seems only to get better, scoring 61 for Bayern Munich in the season just ended. He has scored a record 79 goals for England; Wayne Rooney in second place has just 53. "}],[{"start":137.45000000000002,"text":"Most of England’s likely starters play for clubs that reached the knockout stage of the Champions League — the gold standard of quality in modern football — compared with only a minority even of Brazil’s and Argentina’s."}],[{"start":150.25000000000003,"text":"Then there’s the healthier national mood around the team. England used to be weighed down by the bizarre expectation that a midsized nation with a modest tradition in international football ought to win every World Cup. Reaching the quarter-finals in 2006, for instance, was considered an acceptable start. "}],[{"start":168.70000000000002,"text":"The tabloids pumped up the hysteria. After the long collapse of newspaper circulations, it’s hard now to recapture the terror once exercised by the likes of The Sun and Daily Mail over England’s managers and players, on the field and in the bedroom. Nowadays, most English people take a shrunken, more realistic view of their nation’s place in football (and beyond football)."}],[{"start":192.85000000000002,"text":"That makes life easier for an England manager. In 2006 Sven-Goran Eriksson, then the main character in the national tabloid saga, picked all his stars in midfield even though they were incompatible, presumably fearing that otherwise the tabloids would eat him. "}],[{"start":208.55,"text":"By contrast, today’s coach Thomas Tuchel dared to leave the big names Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Harry Maguire at home. Maguire’s mother led a modest backlash, tweeting: “Absolute disgusted.” "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":222.45000000000002,"text":"Tuchel’s choices might prove wrong, but he made them for the right reasons: to help England win."}],[{"start":228.3,"text":"Like Gareth Southgate before him, Tuchel is more a chief executive overseeing specialist units than an old-fashioned coach. Few other nations can match the professionalism of England’s off-field set-up, partly because they cannot afford it. English football has shifted from the language of war (“You could put him in any trench and know he’d be the first over the top” etc), to science. Experts crunch match, physical and penalty data. "}],[{"start":254.3,"text":"Scientific planning should help reduce England’s usual fatigue at World Cups, despite playing eight games in 33 days if the team reach the final."}],[{"start":263.8,"text":"Planning will also bolster the aerial advantage of what is possibly the world’s best heading side. Almost all the likely starters are over six feet tall, and they have been drilling set pieces under specialist guidance."}],[{"start":279.45,"text":"The methods are working. From 1993 to 2017, England’s average position in Fifa’s rankings was 10th. It started Euro 96 ranked 24th. But since 2018, England has always been in Fifa’s top five. It reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2018, the quarters in 2022 and the finals of the last two European championships. "}],[{"start":303.55,"text":"If England wins this year, it would be less surprising than at any point since 1966. Even so, those of us present for the failures would struggle to believe our eyes."}],[{"start":322.75,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781777885_3425.mp3"}