The Lion Kings: A system for rating international players across time, and an all-time England XI

So, international football resumed recently, and while Harry Kane chased down Peter Shilton’s record of 125 England caps, it seemed as good a time as any to revisit an idea I had before the World Cup but could not execute: that of working out a way to compare the records of international players across time. International matches are much more frequent than they used to be. At first, in the 1870s, the only international match in the football calendar was the annual encounter between England and Scotland; and although Wales and what was then a united Ireland team soon got in on the act, it wasn’t until 1908 that England played her first match against a nation outside Britian and Ireland. None of the British nations sent a team to the World Cup (first played in 1930) until the tournament’s fourth edition (1950); and although the first European Nations Cup was staged in 1960, it wasn’t until UEFA was persuaded to allow the British International Championship to be used as a qualifying group that the four nations of the UK deigned to enter. Both of these competitions have grown in size over time; and the recently established European Nations League, responsible for the current round of international fixtures, has increased further the number of opportunities for players from affiliated nations to represent their countries. International caps, in England as elsewhere, may therefore be said to have depreciated in value when it comes to assessing what they say about a player. An Englishman who wins four international caps this year is indubitably a very good player, but probably not regarded by the manager as one of his country’s absolute best. A century ago, the same number of international appearances would have made him a fixture in the national team, selected at every opportunity. (Hats off to George Green, the Sheffield United left-half.) To properly compare the international records of today’s players with those of previous generations, one requires some kind of index robust to the effects of cap inflation. It is such an index that I have sought to create.

I have decided to give every England player who made 50 or more international appearances, along with some luminaries from the old days, a score based on the percentage of possible caps he earned in a given year, up to and including last year. By adding up a player’s scores in each year, I was able to give him a Neutralised International Cap Score (NICS). For instance, a man who played in 100% of his country’s matches in one year and 50% the next would earn a NICS of 150 for those two years. Internationals played during the World Wars were not officially accorded first-class status; but in order to be as fair as possible to those who played during those times, I have decided to count them here. My system is far from perfect. It does not account for the effect of changes in the laws regarding substitutions (should a substitute appearance count for less than a start, or at all?) or for that of team performance on the number of international opportunities (should rounds of tournaments not reached be classed as missed opportunities?). Nonetheless, it provides one with a rough-and-ready way of comparing Kyle Walker’s 96 caps with Bob Crompton’s 41, and Ashley Cole’s 107 with the 43 appearances Eddie Hapgood made in peacetime and wartime internationals combined. The top 50 England internationals, ranked by NICS, are as follows.

As I look at this list, three things become apparent:

1)      It looks about right. Those at the top are those whom one would expect to be there; and if in an all-time England XI, most of the top eleven would probably make the team.

2)      We in England are truly spoiled in this generation. The mass influx of foreign talent to today’s Premier League has made us less appreciative than we should be of our own players. Jordan Henderson is few people’s idea of a star; and when he is playing alongside team-mates such as the Egyptian Mohammed Salah and the Dutchman Virgil Van Dijk, and against opponents such as the Portuguese Bruno Fernandes and the Belgian Kevin de Bruyne, it is easy to overlook him; but in any other generation, a player like him would have been recognised as a giant of the English game.

3)      There’s something clearly wrong with it. Yes, Jordan Henderson has been underappreciated; but no, he is not and never has been as good a player as his 24^th place ranking makes him look. Comparing the composition of his score with those of the scores attained by his neighbours in the list illustrates why. Henderson has been playing for England for sixteen years, sometimes a cornerstone of the team but more often on the fringes – someone who may nor may not be chosen, good enough to be considered for selection but not too good to leave out. Gordon Banks and Tommy Lawton had very different careers. Neither lasted as long as Henderson in the national team; but each was a constant or near-constant presence in the team in his prime. Banks’ 73 international caps, won between 1963 and 1972, represent 76% of the games England played in that time; and Lawton did not miss a single full international between his first and his last. Betweeen Henderson’s first international appearance and his most recent, he has played in slightly less than half of possible internationals. To properly evaluate a player’s international career, one must consider his peak performance as well as his overall contribution.

To this end, I added to a player’s career NICS the highest score he attained over any continuous five-year period, scaled by a factor of five to give equivalence. This number is referred to as his Peak International Cap Score (PICS). This is, again, far from perfect. For reasons that had little to do with their abilities, Bobby Charlton and Kevin Keegan were both less likely to be picked for England during the periods in which they won the Golden Ball than in earlier parts of their careers. Nonetheless, PICS does give a rough indication of how important a player was to the team at his most important. The top fifty, ranked by PICS, are listed below.

This list is perhaps slightly more surprising than the first, although it contains several of the same names. Like the NICS list, it illustrates how unappreciative the Premier League has made us of our own generation of English players (How many of you would have guessed that Joe Hart would rank above Peter Shilton? I certainly wouldn’t.); and even more than the NICS list, it gives credit to old-time players who are often forgotten and to the unspectacular but dependable players without whom no team can function. Willie Wedlock, the Edwardian midfield pivot who shares with Johnnie Holt the distinction of being the smallest centre-half ever to play for England, is probably over-rated by this metric, his perfect score probably owing as much to the politics of the FA Selection Committee as to his play on the pitch; but G.O. Smith, the late Victorian centre-forward who reminds us that the “false 9” is not a new tactic, deserves his place in any discussion of England’s all-time greats.

Adding NICS to PICS, counting a player’s peak years twice, gives us a player’s Total International Cap Score (TICS). Below are the top fifty, ranked by TICS.

Unfortunately, I was working without this calendar year’s data, so Harry Kane and Jordan Pickford are rated a little lower than they should be. If this year’s matches were included, Kane would surely make the top ten, overtaking Wayne Rooney as the highest-ranked striker on the list.

So who are the Lion Kings, the men who make up England’s greatest-ever XI? Here, one must consider not only individual appearance tallies but how well players performed in their appearances, and how well combinations of players would work or did work together. Inevitably, objective data must meet subjective opinion; and I’m sure your opinion will differ from mine.

One thing that must be considered is the formation. Since football became a truly international sport, there have been two distinctly English formations: the W-M developed in the late 1920s after the offside law changed, and the 4-4-2 diamond with which Alf Ramsey’s team won the World Cup in 1966. At a minimum, an all-time England team should be able to adopt either. Ideally, a modern 4-3-3 should also be possible. With this flexibility in mind, I have selected the following players.

1.      Peter Shilton takes the Number 1 jersey, with Gordon Banks his highly capable backup. In terms of peak performance, there is very little to choose between them. Both were known as spendidly agile shot-stoppers and fine defensive organisers, compensating for a relative lack of height with technique and intelligence. Shilton was the more physically imposing presence, Banks better at stopping penalty kicks. Banks, a World Cup winner in 1966 and famous for making what many consider the greatest save ever in the 1970 tournament, was voted England’s Footballer of the Year by the Football Writers’ Association in 1972. Shilton was given an equivalent award by his fellow professionals in 1978, the year in which his Nottingham Forest team won the Division I Championship. With Shilton guarding the net, the Forest would go on to win the European Cup in each of the next two seasons.

Each, at his best, had a case for being considered the best goalkeeper in the world; but in terms of longevity, there’s no contest. Perhaps Shilton stayed in the England team a little too long (he was criticised for his slow reactions towards the end of his international career, most notably in the World Cup semi-final against Germany); and certainly, Banks was unlucky to have his career cut short by a car crash that cost him the sight in his right eye. However, it’s also true that Banks was thirty-five at the time of his traffic accident, and would not have been likely to have many more years remaining at the highest level in any case; that Shilton could easily have earned even more international caps had his best years not coincided with those of Ray Clemence, an excellent goalkeeper in his own right. And for what it’s worth, when Leicester City manager Matt Gillies found himself forced to choose between the World Champion Banks and the promising reserve Shilton, in the season immediately following Banks’ triumphant summer, it was Shilton whom he chose. I’m doing the same - although if the game looks like going to penalties, a substitution may be in order.

Joe Hart, Jordan Pickford, Sam Hardy and David Seaman all also a achieved a TICS above 1000. Frank Swift scored almost exactly 900. Seaman, the tallest of them and as fine a shot-stopper as any, will be called upon if a more dominant aerial presence is required.

2.      At right-back, Bob Crompton is a no-brainer. The mustachioed motor engineer, who captained Blackburn Rovers to the League Championship in 1912 and 1914, was a fixture in the national team for thirteen years. 41 caps may not sound like a world-class player’s tally today; but today, that tally would translate to at least 130. Between his first international in 1902 and his last in 1914, he missed only five. Had the First World War not caused first-class football to be suspended, he might well have earned more caps still.

How did he play? In Crompton’s day, the term full-back meant what it said. Crompton and his partner stayed back, focused on blocking the central route to their own goal. They had to be capable of defending in wide areas, too; but overlapping down the flanks was not their responsibility. Crompton seems to have been a particularly defensive defender, more known for his speed and strength than for his skill on the ball. In his celebrated partnership with West Bromwich Albion’s Jesse Pennington, he seems to have been the brawn to Pennington’s brain. The shoulder charge was known to be a speciality of his. However, to dismiss him as a mere brute is to do him a disservice. Charlie Buchan, the great inside-forward of Sunderland and Arsenal, described Crompton as “scrupulously fair and as good a kicker of the ball as I have seen.”

Players whose careers took place before television are especially hard to evaluate; but in terms of peak performance, he seems to have been at least the equal of Kyle Walker or Gary Neville; and his longevity at international level far exceeds that of Jimmy Armfield, even though Armfield’s raw total of 43 England caps slightly exceeds Crompton’s. For the spot on the right side of the all-time England defence, he has no serious rival. It’s even possible that, given his speed, he would be an excellent overlapper if given the opportunity; but even if not, he earns his place. If need be, the job of advancing from the back can be safely left to others.

3.      Ashley Cole would relish the responsibility. The Arsenal and Chelsea wing-back spent much of his career dashing up the left flank in support of his forwards; and although he found his freedom to do so restricted when José Mourinho was his manager, subsequent managers Luiz Felipe Scolari and Guus Hiddink liberated him to demonstrate that the ability had never left him. By that point, his two years playing under a caution-first coach had sharpened the defensive positioning that had previously been the biggest weakness in his game, enabling him to subdue opposing wingers as impressively as he supported his own. At his peak, he was one of the few defenders in the world capable of consistently getting the better of Cristiano Ronaldo; and he became famous for his ability to cover the centre, intercepting the ball on the goal-line when required. This ability is especially important when playing in a back three; and although Cole rarely had to do so in his career, his ability to play a central position renders him well-suited to playing in a W-M as well as the 4-4-2 to which he was accustomed.

It is this versatility, allied to his endurance, that elevates him above his closest rivals for the Number 3 shirt: fellow Arsenal alumni Eddie Hapgood and Kenny Sansom, and Crompton’s long-serving partner Jesse Pennington. In the event that the role proves too much for him, the man most suited to fill his Number 3 jersey is probably Stuart Pearce, Nottingham Forest’s “Psycho” of the nineties. Pearce, a punk enthusiast who tackled even harder than he rocked, played in an M-defence several times under Glenn Hoddle; and was a good enough runner and crosser to take sole responsibility for his flank at Italia ’90. He is remembered for missing a penalty in England’s semi-final exit of that tournament, but this was uncharacteristic: he was usually a dead-shot from dead-balls, as well.

4.      Ray Wilkins was one of those players slightly unfortunate to have been born at the wrong time and in the wrong country. A midfield metronome superbly skilled at retaining posession and maintaining the shape of the team, he had the misfortune to be playing in England in the late seventies and early eighties, where the dominant football culture was one of urgency above all else. Midfield players were expected to run all game long, with little thought given to whether they were running in the right direction or not. Ron Atkinson, his manager at Manchester United, nicknamed him “The Crab” for his habit of passing laterally; but when he was transferred to AC Milan, he was much more readily appreciated. England managers Don Revie, Ron Greenwood and Bobby Robson always knew his value. They knew that it was Wilkins’ willigness to rein in his aggressive instincts that gave dynamos like Bryan Robson the freedom to charge forward, and that willigness earned him seven years’ worth of caps and a place at two World Cups. That he is most famous for an uncharacteristic loss of temper in Mexico ’86, in which he threw the ball at the referee, is an injustice to his contributions.

Paul Ince, the first black man to captain England, was another Manchester United man who reached a new level when he moved to Milan in 1995 – in his case playing for Internazionale. Ince, a more characteristically English midfielder known for his energy and bite, greatly improved his positional discipline and game management while playing in Italy – a development which would bear fruit for England, most famously in a decisive World Cup qualifier against Italy in which a cut to the head did not prevent him giving a commanding performance that helped secure England’s qualification.  

Either would be a fine choice for the role of right-half and midfield anchor; but both will have to miss out, relegated to the bench by the enduring excellence of Billy Wright. Told at the age of fourteen by Major Frank Buckley, manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, that he was “too small” to make it as a footballer, the Shropshire lad was retained as a member of the club’s ground staff only because he was good at weeding the pitch. His tenacity and tactical intelligence, allied to an agility which allowed him to outjump opponents far taller than him, soon proved the Major wrong; and within a year, he would be playing on the same pitch for the first team – the club’s youngest ever player and, when he scored twice on his debut, its youngest ever goalscorer. Those records didn’t officially count, as by then the Second World War had started and first-class football had been replaced by regional competitions; but by the time hostilities ceased and national competitions were ready to resume, Wright was ready for the real thing. Playing mostly as an inside-forward, he had played his way into the England team, selected for the first time for the Victory International against Belgium in 1946. This match proved a turning point in his career, not only because it was his first international but because -not for the last time- his experience in the national team prompted a change of position. An injury to Frankie Soo forced Wright to fill in at wing-half, where he would remain for the next eight years. There, he would win the League, the Cup, the Footballer of the Year award, and 59 official international caps to add to his five Victory internationals. There, he probably would have remained until he retired, had an injury to Syd Owen in the 1954 World Cup not compelled him to switch to centre-half – another positional change, forced by necessity on international duty, to which he adapted so well that the temporary move was made permanent. In his new position, he would lead the Wolves to two more First Division titles. At international level, he would become the first man to make 100 appearances for any country, finishing his career with 110 – including 70 in a row and 90 as captain.

And he did it all cleanly, renowned for his sense of fair play as much as for his ability. A. E. Housman would have been proud. Few others have attained anything like the same status in England’s football history, and an all-time England team just has to have him. The only question is where to put a man who won international caps in all three half-back positions. Stanley Matthews believed that he was better at centre-half, where his defensive intelligence and aerial ability were paramount, than at wing-half, where his distribution failed him slightly too often; but I’ve decided to put him at right-half where he played slightly more frequently. In total, he played 48 internationals at right-half, 46 at centre-half, and 6 at left-half. More importantly, however, is the fact that however prodigious his agility and timing in the air, Wright was on the short side for a central defender, and on the slow side as well. Owing to the composition of the team elsewhere, it needs a taller and faster man to hold the defence together.

5.      Had he not forsaken the chance to represent his country at the World Cup in 1950, opting instead to join an outlaw league in Colombia, Neil Franklin might have gone down in history as the greatest centre-half England ever had. A disclipined, dominant defender and a cultured, constructive ball-player; Franklin had been an ever-present in the England team for five years. At the age of twenty-eight, he could have reasonably looked forward to remaining so for at least the next four, playing in not only the coming World Cup but the next one as well. As it was, he never won another cap even after his return to England. His PICS of 500 and TICS above 1000 place him in the conversation; but at 5 ft 10 ½ ins, he falls short of the dominant aerial presence demanded.

The same is true of Billy Wedlcok, Bristol City’s “India-rubber man” of the Edwardian period. Wedlock, as discussed previously, was probably preferred to Manchester United’s Charlie Roberts -a Players’ Union firebrand- for political as much as footballing reasons, and his pertect PICS is likely an inflation of his true ability. In any case, Wedlock, who played before the change in the offside law turned the centre-half into a de facto third full-back, was more of a midfield player than a defender, and thus unsuited to this team’s structure.

After Franklin’s defection, a series of inferior players were fielded in his position until Wright’s revelation. After Wright’s retirement, it took fifteen years for a long-term successor to emerge. Peter Swan, Maurice Norman, Jack Charlton, Brian Labone and Roy McFarland all had runs in the Number 5 jersey before David Watson made the stopper’s position his own. Brought to a nation’s notice by his role in Sunderland’s FA Cup triumph in 1973, Watson earned his first England cap a year later. Over the next eight years, he won 65, making him the country’s most-capped player to never feature in a World Cup. He played in the qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup; but by the time the tournament began, his place had gone to Ispwich Town’s appositely named Terry Butcher. Tough yet technical, violent yet versatile, and toweringly tall, Butcher was the cornerstone of the England defence for the better part of a decade, playing in three World Cups; and his performance in a qualifier against Sweden in 1989 –playing on after a head injury, continuing to head the ball until his stitches broke, literally bleeding for his country-  remains one of English football’s defining memories of itself. Watson and Butcher, however, were left-sided players; and with the more conservative wing-half playing on the left, this team could do with a centre-half comfortable shading to the right. Des Walker, Butcher’s central defensive partner at Italia ’90, took over the role of defensive leader after Butcher’s retirement and became the fastest player to reach 50 England caps, hitting the mark in slightly over four years and missing only three opportunities. Quicker and cleaner than Butcher, he almost never fouled an opponent and was almost impossible to beat in a foot race. He was not, however, the most technical of players; and when Terry Venables replaced Graham Taylor as England manager, Walker never won another cap. At less than 6 feet tall, he also lacks the aerial presence required. Tony Adams of Arsenal, more similar to Butcher in style and build, was a commanding presence at the back in the last years of the twentieth century, especially after overcoming his drinking problems; but he was too slow to be the right fit for this team.

To find the right man for the stopper’s role, we must look closer to our own time.

 In the early years of the twenty-first century, the days of what was considered England’s “golden generation,” Sven Eriksson and Steve McLaren had the luxury of being able to choose between three centre-backs of the highest class, each possible pairing of whom had a major tournament together. Which of three one prefers says as much about one’s personality or club loyalties as it does about the players themselves. If you’re a Chelsea fan, or if you like your defenders in the Butcher mould, your vote is likely to go to John Terry. If, like me, you favour the Franklin type, you probably prefer Rio Ferdinand – a stately sweeper who served with distinction the Uniteds of West Ham, Leeds and Manchester. If you want a taller, more technical version of Walker, Sol Campbell is your man – unless, of course, you are a Tottenham Hotspur supporter who hasn’t got over his leaving the Spurs for their North London neighbours. Putting aside my own personal preferences and club loyalties, I consider Campbell the best stylistic fit – even though his individual record is slightly less impressive than the others’. Campbell, the defensive rock of Arsenal’s Invincibles, made 73 international appearances to Terry’s 77 and Ferdinand’s 81; he ranks slightly lower than both of them on both NICS and TICS, slightly beating Ferdinand on PICS mainly thanks to the latter’s suspension in 2004; and his collection of medals at club level, while impressive, weighs significantly less than the hauls accumulated by the others. He won two Premier League championships, against Terry’s five and Ferdinand’s six; and whereas Ferdinand’s Manchester United and Terry’s Chelsea each won the European Champions’ League, Campbell’s goal in the 2006 final wasn’t enough for Arsenal to beat Barcelona. Yet he was as physically imposing as Terry without being anything like as dirty: in his club career, he picked up less than half as many penalty points as the Chelsea captain in almost as many games. He was as tall and as fast as Ferdinand, and less likely to lose concentration at key moments. (Ferdinand’s eight-month suspension for forgetting to take a drugs test may have been harsh, but it was illustrative of his biggest weakness on the pitch.) Although he made slightly fewer international appearances than the others, he arguably contributed more in those appearances than they did in theirs, being selcected for the all-star teams of both the 2002 World Cup and the 2004 Euroepan Championship. His record of only one goal in international football, a header against Sweden in the 2002 World Cup, compares unfavourably to Ferdinand’s three and Terry’s six; but it wasn’t his fault that Alan Shearer unneccessarily obstructed the goalkeeper when he headed into the Argentinian net in the 1998 World Cup, nor that Terry himself did the same against Portugal at Euro 2004. Had either of those goals counted, Campbell could have been a national hero. Campbell himself may appear more than appropriately aware of having been unlucky and underappreciated in terms of his legacy, but his being his own biggest fan does not mean that he is not substantially correct. All things considered, I think he’s the best Number 5 this team can have. Tall enough, strong enough and fast enough to make up for the athletic deficiencies elsewhere in the defence; he was also composed enough in possession to carry the ball forward and disciplined enough to hold his position if one of his partners did likewise. His passing was probably not as good as Terry’s, and certainly not the equal of Ferdinand’s, but it was good enough for him to hold down a place in Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal team, and any deficiencies in his distribution can be compensated for by the man to his left.

6.      Yes, there’s only one place left to put Bobby Moore, the man who lifted the World Cup in 1966. Like Wright, he won over 100 caps, 90 of them as captain. Like Wright, he did so playing in all three half-back positions. Like Wright, he was on the short side and on the slow side for a defender, which is the main reason I’ve picked them both at wing-half rather than centre-half; but like Wright, he compensated for these deficiencies with a determination and intelligence that gave the lie to all who wrote him off. And like Wright, he is simply too good, too iconic a figure in our island story, to consider leaving out. Englanders who could hardly discern a football from a cricket bat will recognise the image of him hoisting the Jules Rimet Trophy, held aloft on the shoulders of his colleagues, in the summer sun at Wembley.

Almost among those who had written him off had been himself. The young Moore had found it hard to see anything special in his own ability, only the encouragement of Malcolm Allison keeping him confident enough to keep going. He progressed through the ranks at West Ham United as a stopper centre-half before coming into his own as a withdrawn wing-half. It was Moore who coined the term “sweeper” to decribe his new role, and few have ever executed it better than he. The term was psychologically significant: raised by a “clean-freak” mother who inculcated the same fastidiousness in her son, he brought that attitude to his play, dedicating himself to tidying up his team-mates’ mess without needing to muddy his own shorts. He didn’t, however, stop there. Defending alongside his stopper centre-half, he not only snuffed out attacks as casually as if he were weeding his garden, but once the ball was won strode into midfield to start one of his own. He scored very few goals himself, but he was an excellent prompter of forwards, recording two assists in the 1966 World Cup Final; and an analysis of England’s results with and without him during his career indicates that he had more of an impact on his team’s offensive play than its defending. The frequency of goals conceded scarcely changed whether he played or not, but significantly more were scored when he did. He wasn’t a physically aggressive defender, preferring to win the ball by stealth than by strength, but he was far from soft. He overcame testicular cancer to captain his club to the FA Cup in 1964, being voted Footballer of the Year; he blotted out the distraction of a contract dispute while winning the World Cup in 1966; and after being arrested on trumped-up charges of shoplifting ahead of the 1970 edition, proceeded to play some of the best football of his career. His international career ended sadly, his error in Poland contributing to England’s failure to qualify for the 1974 World Cup, but he had left a glorious legacy. When the FA commissioned a statue to be erected outside the new Wembley Stadium, there was only one man who could be thus honoured.

Honourable mentions go to four men who each won major honours with their clubs, and earned between five and six years’ worth of England caps in a concentrated period, achieving a toal score slightly short of 1000: Ernest “Nudger” Needham, Sheffield United’s long-serving stalwart of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; Portsmouth’s “Gentleman Jim” Dickinson of the post-war period; Ron Flowers, one of England’s highest-scoring defensive players and a club-mate of Billy Wright in Wolverhampton; and “Crazy Horse” Emlyn Hughes, who played every defensive position except goal for Liverpool’s dominant teams of the seventies.

Last but not least is Duncan Edwards, the Gentle Giant of Manchester United’s Busby Babes. I didn’t bother to calculate a score for a player who died less than three years after his international debut; but had he lived long enough to enjoy a full career, this section might have turned out very different.

7.      So much for the defence. Now, we’re into the forward line; and here, a word must be said about the context in which these scores were attained, for even a NICS above 1200 and a TICS above 1600 may under-rate the ability and durability of Stanley Matthews. One of only three men to play for England both before and after the Second World War, Matthews made his first international appearance in 1934 and his last in 1957. For most of the time in between, especially after the war, he was celebrated as one of the best players not only in Britain but in the world. At the age of nineteen, he was part of the England team that beat the Italian world champions at Highbury. At twenty-two, playing against Czechoslovakia’s defeated World Cup finalists, he moved to inside-right in an emergency reshuffle and scored a hat-trick. At the age of forty-one, he bewitched Brazil’s great Nilton Santos at Wembley. In 1948, he was England’s first Footballer of the Year, an award he would win again in 1963 at the age of 48. In 1956, he became the first man to receive the Golden Ball as European Footballer of the Year. He hung up his boots for the last time in 1965, the only man to have played First Division football into his fifties. And he did it as a winger, the position which traditionally demands speed more than any other! How, then, did a player whose international career spanned twenty-four years play in just slightly more than half that years’ worth of international matches? Part of the answer may be put down to a loss of form in the mid-thirties, which saw him out of the national team for a year and a half; but the greater part of the answer may be found in the post-war period. First, Matthews frequently found himself competing for the right wing position with Tom Finney, the only other English outside-forward who can be considered his equal in the game’s long history. For a while, the two greatest wingers the country has ever had got in each other’s way. Later, there seems to have been a disbelief among selectors that he could possibly have kept going as long as he had – a conviction that Old Father Time was bound to catch up with him sooner or later, and that it was better to jettison him before it happened. There was, too, concern about his idiosyncratic style of play – that he would hold up the advance of his fellow forwards by dropping too deep and holding onto the ball too long. But Matthews, fastidious about his diet and training, made fools of those who said he was too old. His signature move -of leading his marker to lean inside with a drop of the shoulder, then nudging the ball to the outside- was deployed so effectively that it became named after him; and although he scored few goals himself, his cut-backs from the by-line laid on countless for his colleagues. Into his forties, every time he was dropped, the Wizard of the Dribble played so well at club level that the selectors had little choice but to recall him. The most notable such instance was his heroic performance in the FA Cup Final of 1953 - the first to be seen by a mass TV audience, and a game which has been pinpointed as the moment at which soccer overtook cricket as England’s most popular sport. 83 wartime and peacetime internationals are impressive enough; but had it not been for those factors, he might be the record-holder even today.

The recently deceased Keegan, a European champion with Liverpool and twice a Golden Ball winner himself after his transfer to Hamburg, also merits a mention. Keegan, though not as skilful as Matthews, was an industrious and versatile forward whose goalscoring instincts earned him 63 England caps and the affection of the nation between 1972 and 1982. He was unfortunate that his prime should come in the seventies, when England failed to qualify for two World Cups and the European Championship in 1976; but he was one of the bright spots in the team during that time. He did travel to Spain for the 1982 World Cup; but, injured and past his best, he managed only one appearance as a substitute, missing an open goal in a decisive second round match. Matthews is too good to leave out; but Keegan will look on from the bench, ready to enter the fray if a more direct approach is required.

8.      You’ve probably noticed that I didn’t include David Beckham in my candidates for the Number 7 shirt. No, I haven’t forgotten him; but although Beckham did frequently play as a winger, this was usually as a withdrawn winger in a 4-4-2 formation. In a W-M, which I want this team to be capable of adopting, he would be better used as a wing-half or inside-forward, positions in which he also has experience. It was as a play-making half-back that Beckham appeared and scored in the first of his three World Cups, and he would later make that role his own at Real Madrid. It was as a deep inside-forward that he was first trained at Manchester United; and although it was on the flank that he found a settled position, he would return to inside-right whenever needed, doing great credit to himself there in big European ties. Of those considered for the position, he ranks highest in NICS and TICS, He did, however, need someone else to do his dirty work; and one can’t afford to have too many players like that in a team.

His contemporary, Steven Gerrard, did not have that problem. Liverpool’s link-man and “Captain Fantastic,” whose cup-fighting club teams won everything except the League from 1998 to 2015, went thundering into tackles like a force of nature. Having won the ball, he would distribute it with a range and accuracy which, if not quite the equal of Beckham’s were not far behind; and as the attack developed, he would be ready to either follow his front-runners into the penalty area to meet a cross, or let loose one of his long-distance drives that threatened to punch a hole in the net. One of the most complete midfield players England has ever produced, Gerrard was a half-back and an inside-forward in one, with a strong case for being selected in either position. His aggressive instincts, however, made him more effective in the latter position, where his tendency to advance at every opportunity didn’t leave dangerous gaps behind him. England managers didn’t always appreciate this, frequently pairing him in midfield with the equally attack-minded Paul Scholes or Frank Lampard – combinations whose components subtracted from each other’s contributions more than they complemented each other. Gerrard often disappointed in major tournaments as a result, although he still scored in three; but when covered by a more conservative midfield player, he was in his element. Billy Wright, I’m sure, would be his ideal foil. His ability to play in a wide position adds to his usefulness, enabling Matthews to stay upfield if the team plays a 4-4-2.

I’m not completely happy about selecting either Beckham or Gerrard, so little is there to choose between them; but there is no clearly superior option. Paul Scholes, a club-mate of Beckham’s at Manchester United, was superior to both in vision and touch, but he gave up on international football before his thirtieth birthday. Paul Gascoigne was a star at Italia ’90 and Euro ’96, but a succession of injuries and tactical issues often rendered him useless or worse in the years between. David Platt, a contemporary of Gascoigne’s, was a prodigious goal-scorer and fit better into Graham Taylor’s system; but he too had relatively few opportunities to contribute. Glenn Hoddle was one of the most gifted playmakers of the eighties; but he could be marked out of a game, and his poor defensive work-rate meant that his national team managers never appeared to truly trust him. Alan Ball, the perpetual motion machine of Alf Ramsey’s world champions, worked as hard as anyone, but his prolific goal-scoring at club level never translated to international football. Jordan Henderson, tidy passer and astute positional player though he is, has never carried much of a goal threat at all. Horatio Carter, one of the great midfield generals of the thirties and forties, may have been Matthews’ favourite wing-partner, but the appreciation was not mutual. Steve Bloomer was the greatest striker of the late Victorian and early Edwardian period, but he played too far forward to fit into this team’s structure. None of these can match the raw total or neutralised cap scores of Beckham and Gerrard, and none is a clearly superior tactical fit. Gerrard it is, then – by roughly the width of an offside line.

9.      At centre-forward, we come to the man who prompted the writing of this article in the first place. Harry Kane ranks slightly below Wayne Rooney in my TICS list, but only because my list is out of date. With this year’s appearances taken into account, he would by this metric stand above Rooney as England’s greatest-ever striker; and it is hard to think of a more complete one. He does not have the lightning-quick pace of Gary Lineker or Michael Owen; but in the inteligence of his movement in the goalmouth, and in the ruthless efficiency of his finishing, he is every bit their equal. He is not a battering ram centre-forward in the mould of Nat Lofthouse or Alan Shearer, but he has the same shooting power and excellent heading ability. He is as creative and collective-minded as G.O. Smith was reputed to be - as able and willing to drop back and contribute to build-up play, or to set up a team-mate to score, he is to go for goal himself – giving the lie to all those who say that a successful striker must be selfish. He has not had the chance to score a hat-trick in a World Cup Final, as Geoff Hurst did in 1966; but his record in major tournaments shows a fine ability to, as the Americans have it, “come through in the clutch.” No flat-track bully or sunshine boy, he has scored more goals than any other Englishman in both the World Cup and the European Championship, winning a Golden Boot in each. And he has been sufficiently trusted as a leader to break the record, once held by Wright and Moore, of 90 appearances as captain. He is currently on 97.   

Perhaps Tommy Lawton, a near-constant presence in the team from shortly before World War II to shortly after, could rival him for the variety of his game; but Lawton made his last international appearance at the age of twenty-eight, his transfer from First Division Chelsea to Third Division Notts County seeming to have put him out of the minds of the England selectors. Kane, by contrast is still playing international football well into his thirties – and he shows no signs of slowing down. I am writing this while the national team is three games into a four-game series, the first series of internationals after a World Cup which might have reasonably been expected to signal his withdrawal from the international stage. He has started all three games, scoring four goals, taking his tallies of international caps and goals to 124 and 89 respectively. His strike-rate appears to compare unfavourably with Lawton’s goal-a-game record; but it’s worth remembering that in Lawton’s day, goals were easier to come by and substitutions didn’t exist. Adjust for those considerations, and the gap surely shrinks considerably.

The one serious weakness in Kane’s centre-forward play is the flip-side of his great all-around ability. So willing is he to drop back that he is often inclined to do so even when the team would be better served by his staying upfield to provide an out-ball option. If this becomes too much of a problem, the speedy Owen and the target-man Lawton will be waiting in the wings.

10.      England does not revere the Number 10 as much as the Latin countries tend to, but a run through the list of candidates for the inside-left position shows some of the great names in her football history. Here, I shall try to classify them by style.

Declan Rice, a mainstay of the current England team, is probably the most tactically conservative candidate. Although once considered a more defensive midfield player, he has reached a new level since making the transition from holding half-back to shuttling inside-forward - a link-man who breaks opposition lines with his running on and off the ball. Jimmy Greaves, the national team’s star striker in the early-to-mid-1960’s, stood at the other extreme – stood being the apposite word. Hanging upfield alongside the centre-forward, Greaves would appear barely involved in the action at all until the ball came his way – whereupon he would be onto it like a flash, slipping it into the net before his marker had remembered he was there. Michael Owen, the quick man to Alan Shearer’s or Emile Heskey’s big man around the turn of the century, was of a similar type until he eventually became the centre-forward himself.

Between these two ends of the defence-to-attack spectrum, inside-forwards can be classified further. Teddy Sheringham, Alan Shearer’s setup man in the nineties, was a provider first and a goalscorer second, dropping off the front to create chances for his centre-forward. Johnny Haynes, the creative hub of the team between the mid-fifties and early sixties, was a midfield schemer or general, using his creative vision to direct the entire attack. Glenn Hoddle, whom manager Bobby Robson compared to Haynes, perfromed a similar role roughly a quarter-century later. Paul Gascoigne was a virtuouso – an impish, irrepressible individualist who caused chaos in opposing defences with his unpredictable dribbling.

Of course, classification is a tricky business – with some players crossing classes more than others. Peter Beardsley, who did for Gary Lineker in the late eighties and early nineties what Sheringham would later do for Shearer, was a fine dribbler as well as an expert provider. Bryan Robson, Manchester United’s “Captain Marvel” of the same period, was a both a dynamic link-man and an excellent goalscorer, with 26 in his 90 internationals. Less combative than Robson but equally adept at striking from midfield were West Ham United Academy graduates Martin Peters and Frank Lampard Jr. Horatio Carter and Paul Scholes were superb schemers who at their best scored more than their share of goals. Wayne Rooney, a shadow striker to a succession of centre-forwards from Owen to Kane, combined the bustling runs of Gascoigne with the unselfish link-play of Sheringham or Beardsley – all while setting a new England goalscoring record, with 53 in his 120 appearances.

But only one candidate could do it all, did it for more than a decade, and did it on the biggest stage of all. Step forward, Bobby Charlton. Charlton, the most celebrated of Manchester United’s “Busby Babes,” recovered from the Munich air crash to become an inspirational figure in his club’s revival, and played his way into the England team within months – just in time for the 1958 World Cup. He didn’t play in that tournament, but that would be the last time he was dropped for an international of great importance for a dozen years. A striker in his youth, he proved to be just as effective when shunted out to the left wing in the early sixties, before seizing the chance to reivent himself for a second time as the greatest midfield general English football has ever known. A master of the cross-field pass, with a right foot the equal of David Beckham’s and a left foot to rival Horatio Carter’s, he could switch the focus of attack as well as anyone. If no passing option presented itself, he would dribble as aggressively as Rooney or Gascoigne would later do, albeit in a highly unconventional style. Striding forward with a willowy grace, he would knock the ball ahead of him just far enough to tempt an opponent into a challenge, before whisking it away a split-second before the tackle came in. The first man thus beaten, Charlton would pass thhrough the gap created when a second came out to meet him. If no-one did, he would take it upon himself to score, letting loose a shot so powerful that it seemed to bore a hole through the air on its way to goal. By his own admission, he was a poor tackler; but he was always willing to work back, making himself available for a pass when the ball was won; and if an opposing misdfielder took a heavy touch or dawdled on the ball, Charlton would be there to steal it from under his nose without the need to crash into him. The brains of the attack for England’s World Champions in 1966, he was awarded the Golden Ball at the end of that year. In each of the following two years, as his Manchester United team won the League Championship and European Cup, he finished second in the voting. His international career ended in 1970, his last game for England a World Cup quarter-final from which he had been withdrawn with his team winning and which they went on to lose. That was his 106^th international cap, a record at the time; and had the European Championship been as big a deal then as it later became, with managers thinking in two-year instead of four-year cycles, it is likely that he would have earned even more.

11.      And so to the last position in the eleven. In terms of depth, this position may be the weakest. John Barnes and Chris Waddle, both stars of the late eighties and early nineties, were unfortunate to be playing at the same time as each other - a time at which English coaches often mistrusted wing-play. Barnes ranks thrity-ninth among England players in TICS, Waddle sixtieth. Raheem Sterling, a veteran of three World Cups and two European Championships, is ranked fiftieth with time to climb – although the likelihood that he will is decreasing. To find the best candidate for the left wing, we must look to a man who played most of his club football on the right.

It was the discovery that he could play there, made in Lisbon in 1947, that resolved the England selectors’ dilemma between Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews. It wasn’t the first time that Preston North End’s most famous player had had to change positions, and it wouldn’t be the last. An inside-left in his club’s reserve team, he had become a (then highly unusual) left-footed right-winger when drafted into the first team in an emergency. Outside-left was his least favoured forward position; but when an injury to Bobby Langton forced the selectors to look for an alternative, they alighted upon the only other left-footed forward in the travelling party. Finney wasn’t about to turn down the chance to play for his country in any position; and if he felt ill at ease with the play on his right side instead of his left, he showed little sign of it. Within two minutes of lining up in his new position, he had lain on a goal for Tommy Lawton, and he would later score himself in a 10-0 victory. The forward line which played that day, and which a year later beat Italy 4-0 in Turin, is widely considered the greatest in England’s history, and Finney may have been its greatest member. Finney was not as celebrated as Matthews among the public, and of course did not last as long at the highest level; but when both were at their peak, he was widely considered his rival’s superior by his fellow professionals – even if Finney himself was only a part-time professional, combining his career in first-class football with a successful plumbing business. Finney, it was agreed, was a tougher tackler than Matthews while remaining an unfailingly fair one, and a greater goal threat while being just as creative as a provider. Even after the experiment of playing both had proved such a resounding success, Finney was picked at outside-right ahead of Matthews thirty-four times – exactly as many times as he played on the left. In 1956-57, the season in which he turned thirty-five, he proved that the old dog could still learn new tricks. Switching to centre-forward, he won three England caps and his second Footballer of the Year award. The following year, he and Billy Wright would become the first England players to feature in three World Cups, and his goal in the team’s first-round match against the USSR made him the country’s record scorer with 29. He would finish with 30, level with Nat Lofthouse, and 77 international appearances – equivalent to a decade’s worth. There is no finer testament to the greatness of Matthews and Finney than the fact that they each won so many caps in spite of one another; and even with more than 150 years’ worth of players to choose from, I cannot do better than the England selectors did seventy-nine years ago. He played his entire career in a W-M formation, but I’m sure his versatility and work-rate would enable him to adjust to a 4-4-2 with little trouble.

The line-up in graphical form is shown below. The team is shown in a W-M formation, with the arrows depicting the changes that would be made in a shift to a Ramsey-style 4-4-2.

What do you think? What changes would you make? And what topics would you like me to tackle next? Let me know in the comments.