Roy Hodgson might well have taken the majority of the flak for England’s Euro 2016 exit, but as Jamie Carragher points out, the players have plenty to answer for.
Writing in a brutally honest article for The Daily Mail, the former defender describes the England players as being “too soft”, suggesting that the ‘Academy Generation’ have had it too easy.
“I call them the Academy Generation because they have come through in an era when footballers have never had more time being coached. At this point I want to make it clear I am not pointing the finger at academy coaches, as others will do.
But they get ferried to football schools, they work on immaculate pitches, play in pristine training gear every day and everything is done to ensure all they have to do is focus on football. We think we are making them men but actually we are creating babies.”
Adding that whereas the manager, the climate and the facilities are often blamed for an English exit from a major tournament, Carragher adds that this current team, like the 2010 World Cup squad, were knocked out because they simply weren’t good enough.
Referring specifically to the way in which the first Iceland goal was conceded, Carragher rejects the notion that Hodgson and his coaches hadn’t prepared for the long throws Iceland had used in earlier games – pointing the finger at Kyle Walker for failing to stick with the man he was supposedly marking.
The former Liverpool man also appears to question England’s inability to deal with high-pressure situations.
“England were confronted by three pressure situations in Euro 2016 and each time they cracked. The first was in the final 10 minutes against Russia, when they conceded an equaliser, the second was Iceland’s throw-in and the third was when they chased an equaliser against Iceland. They had 72 minutes to get one goal but failed because of stupid decisions, stupid shots and stupid passes.”
Returning to his initial criticism of the ‘Academy Generation’, Carragher ends by claiming that the current generation are simply too soft.
“They lock themselves up in their own bubbles and then, when things go wrong, they retreat back into them to be told it wasn’t their fault. That is the Academy Generation. The generation that became too soft.”
