Why is there England negativity? Sunday Supplement panel debate
Sunday 8 October 2017 16:47, UK
England qualified for the World Cup with a game to spare after beating Slovenia on Thursday, but why is there not more positivity surrounding the national team? That was debated on the Sunday Supplement.
Gareth Southgate's side have comfortably qualified from Group F, with their victory against Slovenia their seventh from nine matches.
However, fans at Wembley on Thursday expressed their frustrations as England struggled to score until second-half injury-time, while one of the loudest cheers of the night was when a paper airplane flew into the goal.
Even manager Gareth Southgate admitted afterwards that England are "not going to become Spain in the next eight months".
Oliver Holt, chief sports writer of the Mail on Sunday, said he thinks part of the problem is that there is a "fear" attached to playing for England.
"Fear has existed for quite a long time playing for England," he said. "I am doing a book with Kieron Dyer at the moment and he was talking about being on the bench at an England game and sitting next to a player who said 'I hope they don't bring me on', because the players were getting some stick.
"Time and again you will speak to players or hear about players going off with England and dreading it. I don't know if that culture exists right now, and Gareth Southgate is a terrific manager to deal with it because he has been through it himself, but if you look at some of the criticism that, for example, Raheem Sterling has had, a lot of it is unfair.
"I suspect he knows he will get a lot more stick with England than he does with Manchester City."
With one round of matches left to play, England are one of only four teams in Europe to have qualified automatically for the World Cup, along with Germany, Spain and Belgium.
But Simon Mullock, chief football writer at the Sunday Mirror, said he does not think qualifying for the tournament is seen as a major achievement.
"When we didn't qualify for tournaments that was when qualifying was an achievement, but I don't think it's that much of an achievement now," he said.
"You can only beat the teams in front of you but if you look at Northern Ireland's group, that includes Germany, Czech Republic and Norway, that's a fantastic achievement, I don't think it feels like a huge achievement for England to qualify."
He added: "I don't think England is unique in having a media that is critical of the national team. Countries like Germany, Brazil and Italy have a huge focus on the national team but they have players who seem to be able to deal with it.
"I just wonder whether football has become more tribal over the last 20 years and fans seem to struggle to get behind players who play for rival teams."
Jack Pitt-Brooke, football writer for The Independent, agreed with Mullock that fans are becoming more involved with their club teams rather than their national team.
"Social media has made us more partisan and tribal and people identify with their team 24/7," he said. "That means there isn't the space anymore to be an England fan. International football is being swallowed by the day-to-day environment of what being a club fan entails.
"There has clearly been a change in the last 10 years with how the public relates to the national team. Between 1996 and 2006 there was a national mania whenever England had a big game, especially at a major tournament, and that just isn't the case now. Clearly something has changed, that is the main reason why getting to the World Cup feels dampened."
