for England brigade.
Steven Gerrard will lead out England tonight in Sweden in the process making his 100th appearance for the country.
It’ll be met, as it has done already, with platitudes and plaudits that don’t merit what has actually occurred in those 100 games. It won’t be talked about in any honest way. No one will ask what has Steven Gerrard done in an England shirt to be worthy of doing it 100 times.
I’ve been posting on here for ages that Gerrard’s exploits on England duty haven’t been worthy of him being picked for the next squad time and time again. Pointing out that of those previous 99 caps you can count the number of decent games – not even great games, just decent – can be counted on one hand. Two of them were against Germany over a decade ago and the others were against the likes of Andorra and Trinidad & Tobago – the latter being achievements against teams that shouldn’t be down on the CV of any England player, never mind one who is captain and about to reach triple digit appearances.
Hell even his chief cheerleader and autobiography ghost writer, Henry Winter, mentions the paucity of Gerrard’s decent performances in a recent piece where he states Gerrard should be classed as good
and not a great
.
But in another puff piece Winter describes classic Gerrard: self-critical, humble, patriotic, hungry
. When the player states that As far as playing for England goes there are 11 heroes [The England World Cup winning XI of 1966]. The rest haven’t really delivered. If they [Moore and Charlton] are 10s [in the ratings], I’m six or seven.
.
Six or seven? How self critical, how humble what humility. Six or seven? More like two or three. Point for turning up, point for turning up on time and a point for getting the name spelled right on the back of his shirt. That’s about the maximum.
Gerrard’s England career can be summed up by one thing – other than England have done bugger all while he’s played – his passing success percentage. It’s 47%.
So every ball that Gerrard has played for England is not even a 50/50. Now that’s pathetic.
And he’s still been picked 100 times for his country by successive managers that can’t look beyond the name, the media darling reputation and what he’s done for club that’s never been replicated for country.
And they wonder why England fail.