Hodgson can use alleged dearth of talent to his advantage

Roy Hodgson’s announcement of the England squad for the Euro 2012 championships has, naturally, seen seasoned armchair pundits up and down the country emerge from anonymity to excoriate the exclusion of players such as Peter Crouch and Micah Richards. Fortunately, Hodgson has not exuded the air of a man who is overly perturbed by criticism since being appointed as England manager; and a good job too, for whatever squad he had eventually picked, it would have represented the meagre pool of talent available to our national side.

Hodgson could have picked the easy option and inundated his squad for the tournament with precocious yet raw talents in the mould of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who he did pick: he could have used the excuse that he needed to familiarise the future of English football with major tournaments. That he did not shows an admirable commitment to eliciting the highest performance level possible from what is ostensibly a feeble group of players. Harsh? Consider that Danny Welbeck and Andy Carroll, two of England’s available three strikers for their opening two group games, have seven caps and one goal between them on the international stage. Indeed, the only orthodox left-winger in the squad, Stewart Downing, boasts a remarkable total of no goals and no assists in the Premier League this season. Fans’ quibbles with his selection are probably justified, but the alternative, Manchester City’s peripheral Adam Johnson, will hardly have Vicente Del Bosque and his Spain squad quaking in their boots.

While Holland can look to Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder to provide attacking impetus, Hodgson will look to Welbeck and a weary, injury-prone Steven Gerrard to dismantle an increasingly confident France in their opening group game. John Terry and Rio Ferdinand may have accomplished a great deal in their illustrious careers, but the fact that debate raged over the inclusion of a creaking 33-year-old and an increasingly unreliable former captain accused of racial abuse simply indicates a lack of confidence in their alternatives. Gary Cahill and Joleon Lescott are Champions League finalists and Premier League winners respectively, and yet their achievements are entirely neglected by an underwhelmed public. England fans have no confidence in their national side at the moment.

And this is where Hodgson can instigate a riposte to the ubiquitous negativity. With Fulham and West Bromwich Albion, Hodgson showcased his abilities to mould an unremarkable squad of players into a cohesive, organised unit with low expectations. Indeed, when in charge of an ostensibly ordinary Switzerland side in 1994, he led them to third place in the World Cup. Finally, it looks like the English public’s faith in their mollycoddled stars has waned to the point where we are positively expected to exit the tournament at the group stage. Rather than tournament regulars such as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard finding themselves over-burdened by excessive expectations, they will relish the opportunity to prove the doubters wrong – Lampard has already flourished in this role by helping to drag Chelsea’s assortment of bellicose pensioners to the Champions League trophy. Rank outsiders in a tournament decorated by Spanish, Dutch, French, German and Italian aristocrats, England’s paupers have the opportunity to subvert the traditional pattern of performing below expectations.

So often in the past, England have been accused of being a team of individuals, too selfish and immersed in their glittering club achievements to perform on the international stage. This time, the players have the indignity of being roundly dismissed as a mutual source of inspiration. John Terry? Disgraced, slow and past it. Gerrard? No longer capable of one-man individual crusades. Ashley Young? Overly flamboyant and desperate to dive. Theo Walcott? Remarkable athlete but cumbersome in executing an end product. Rather than laden with superlatives, the best England has to offer has been verbally emasculated by a media united by scepticism.

Perhaps Hodgson’s hastily-arranged squad will prove themselves to be the collective embodiment of mediocrity that they have been derided as. Maybe they will be humiliated by the artistes of Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery in the first group game, and will never recover. But maybe, just maybe, being substantial underdogs for a tournament that seems accessible to most of the major countries will help them. Perhaps we might even see a team – even just for this tournament – emerge from the rubble that is English football right now.