A few weeks ago, ahead of England’s World Cup qualifier against Serbia, I found myself in a Belgrade restaurant with Paul Robinson, the former England goalkeeper, who has now become an erudite, insightful and forthright pundit for the BBC.
Before long, we were talking about Baden-Baden. Anybody who was there in the beautiful German spa town during the Golden Generation’s doomed attempt to win the 2006 World Cup is drawn back to the subject like a moth to a flame.
England stayed at a hotel on a mountain-top outside the town, under the direction of manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and his partner Nancy Dell’Olio. The players’ wives, girlfriends and families stayed at the five-star Brenners Park hotel in the town. A lot of English journalists were staying there, too.
The two factions had spectacular rows in the hotel bar on most evenings. ‘Don’t worry,’ one of my newspaper colleagues said to a player’s brother one evening as we contemplated covering the latter stages of the competition, ‘you’ll be going home before we do.’ Sadly, he was right.
Occasionally, the FA or the players themselves had to act as peacemakers and intervene. It was a soap opera. It was a circus. Robinson, England’s No1 at the time, allowed himself a wry smile at the memory of everything that happened there. ‘It was just wrong,’ he said.
England’s stay in Baden-Baden – the WAG phenomenon that was born there, the divisions in the squad that were allowed to flourish and the egos that ran wild – has come to symbolise so much of the waste and the froth and the dysfunction of the Golden Generation.
England’s stay in Baden-Baden has come to symbolise so much of the waste and the froth and the dysfunction of the Golden Generation
Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham at the 2006 World Cup – where the WAG phenomenon reached new heights
The excesses of that tournament, and the partying in Baden-Baden, created a circus
Gerrard gave a prominent mention to the way that club loyalties damaged team unity, particularly the rivalries that existed between the Liverpool players and their Manchester United counterparts.
They ate at separate tables, they sat in separate groups on the team bus, they were suspicious of each other, they could not let their club enmities go. Gerrard said he did not enjoy being away with England as much as he enjoyed being away with Liverpool. United’s players – Gary Neville, David Beckham and Paul Scholes – felt exactly the same.
The divisions went further than that, too. Some players, for instance, resented the fact that Beckham, as captain, was allowed to choose the best room in the hotel at the tournament. Complaints were made to Eriksson about that system.
It is an issue which, to the credit of England’s current crop of players, no longer exists.
Eriksson has to take some of the blame for the divisions. He was a lovely man but he did not have the strength to deal with the huge personalities that dominated the England squad at that time.
We talk now about the talent that Thomas Tuchel has at his disposal but it still does not live up to the riches that Eriksson possessed. John Terry, Beckham, Ferdinand, Gerrard, Rooney, Frank Lampard, Owen Hargreaves and Ashley Cole. What a side.
And to think that they never got beyond the quarter-finals of either a World Cup or a European Championship.
They were all world-class players and yet they did not grasp the opportunity they had. It was squandered. Describing them as ‘egotistical losers’, as Gerrard did, seems harsh but perhaps it is factually correct. They could not unite for the common good. They could not see the bigger picture.
Think about the talent in that England team – it is far beyond anything else we have produced since then
Sven-Goran Eriksson was unable to see past the players’ talents, and was overawed by them
Fabio Capello was also unable to tame the egos, crashing out of the 2010 World Cup in the last 16
Those who persist in maintaining that Gareth Southgate under-achieved in his time as England boss fail to see that he was the man who finally fixed the problem that Gerrard referred to and which undid Eriksson and his successors, Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello.
It was Southgate who brought the competing factions together and finally managed to replicate a club culture with the England team. It was Southgate who saw how important that was and who reaped the rewards with appearances in semi-finals and finals.
Gerrard’s observations also shed more light on Tuchel’s recent decision to omit Jude Bellingham from the England squad to face Wales, in a friendly, and Latvia, in a World Cup qualifying tie, over the next week.
Some were astonished by Tuchel’s decision but others saw the wisdom in it. Bellingham is perceived by many to have a negative impact on squad unity, particularly with the disdain with which he appears to treat some of his team-mates. Tuchel has made several pointed allusions to his attitude.
There is an argument that Tuchel is doing with Bellingham what Eriksson never had the will to do with any of his leading players.
There is an argument that says all the talent in the world will not win you a tournament if the squad does not have the right spirit.
‘It’s three weeks ago that we had the best camp, the best performance so far under my responsibility,’ Tuchel said of his decision to leave out Bellingham, who was injured for the 5-0 win in Belgrade. ‘Why would I not stick with the same team?
Steven Gerrard (sat with his head between his knees) labelled that generation ‘egotistical losers’
The past is a warning to current England head coach Thomas Tuchel, and his reaction to the ego of Jude Bellingham
‘Don’t you think that behaviour on the bench, support from the bench, support from training, the competition, the togetherness, enables the 11 to play like they played? I strongly believe that. I felt it in Belgrade, behind me on the bench.
‘The attitude around it – before and after and during the game – was exactly what we want it to be. So why would I risk changing that?’
It was a question which Eriksson never seemed to ask. If he had, maybe Gerrard, Lampard and Beckham would have won trophies with their country to go with the ones they won with their clubs.
And maybe the ‘Golden Generation’ would have become a phrase uttered with reverence and admiration rather than a term that makes us wince for the expectations we harboured and the hopes that were dashed.
