Can Brooking's boys outshine England's golden generation?

Fast-tracked under-19s head to European qualifiers with expectations running high

There was a reminder for Fabio Capello of the sacrifices that will come with retirement when he accompanied Sir Trevor Brooking to a World Cup workshop in Madrid two weeks ago. The Uefa delegates eagerly beat a path to Brooking, congratulating him on the gifted group of young England players who lifted the Under-17s European Championships in May. Capello will not be around to work with any of them.

If the Football Association's director of football development was able to bask in the acclaim, then those players certainly cannot. For reasons including a dearth of talent further up the England ladder, no fewer than eight of the Under-17 group find themselves immediately catapulted up into the Under-19 squad which departs to Belgium tomorrow seeking to qualify for next year's European Championship.

Brooking wishes that Chelsea playmaker Josh McEachran, the Everton midfielder Ross Barkley, Liverpool defender Andre Wisdom, Ipswich Town striker Connor Wickham and others had longer to develop, level by level as Spain's current senior side did through the Under-17, -19 and -21 ranks. "The fact that we are having to fast-track people through probably says we haven't quite got the depth that we should, to give them time to develop physically, mentally and to understand the challenges of tournament football," Brooking says.

Both Jack Wilshere – who has been named in Stuart Pearce's squad for this Friday's 2011 European Under-21 Championship play-off first leg against Romania at Norwich's Carrow Road and the senior squad to face Montenegro at Wembley next Tuesday – and Everton's Jack Rodwell are still eligible for the Under-19 squad. Pearce needs them for the Under-21s, who are not the force they were in the era of James Milner's captaincy.

If any group can adapt, though, then it is probable this one, which, allied with a few of the youngsters back in the Under-16s and Under-17s , are displaying a level of technical proficiency unlike any other Brooking has seen in his FA tenure. "I think we have a little three-year group who keep the ball technically as well as any of the groups that I have had in the last few years," he says.

It is with one of those curiosities that sport can thrown up that Noel Blake, the coach presiding over this talented group, is an individual remembered as the "Zulu Warrior" from his playing days with Birmingham City, when he was a key member of Ron Saunders' extremely physical side. "When I was a player people referred to me as 'the destroyer'," Blake admits. "Managers said to me, 'You're there to destroy. If you pass one good ball in 90 minutes it's a bonus.'"

Not for the first time, it seems, England appear to owe a debt to the late Alan Ball, where the custodian of the Under-19s is concerned. It was when Blake moved to Ball's Portsmouth side in the mid-1980s that he was introduced to the idea of the pass. "[Ball] brought me into the way of thinking that it's about playing the ball," Blake says. "When I went to Portsmouth, technically I was the worst player there. We had a very good passing side but I wasn't familiar with that style of football." Pompey fans of that era say the Jamaica-born Blake did, after a fashion, learn about sideways movement. "From then on I thought, if I ever come into coaching that's something I'll take into it," he says. "As I got older I felt I was undervalued as a player in that respect but I could see the improvements in my game and I've brought that into my coaching."

This was Fratton Park, not Barcelona's La Masia academy, but Blake does indeed preach the passing principles now. "One thing we emphasise is that as a nation we can't look after the ball and we don't know how to retain it and use rotation," Blake says. "We put in a lot of work on that in our practices. We are actually being more demanding. We say to them, 'It's a challenge to look after the ball' and 'If it's not on, don't force the pass.' With due respect to our [English club] game, sometimes the crowd want the ball played forward early. At international level we know you have to be patient. You have to probe. Just because you see a pass straightaway that doesn't necessarily mean it's the one you should play."

The outcome was inconclusive in July's Under-19 European Championship in France, where England stuttered to the semi-finals where they lost 3-1 to Spain. But coaching is one thing, audacious talent is another and this time the story may be different. McEachran, 17 – who to the FA's pleasure has already been given four second-half cameos by Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti this season – catches the eye most with his vision. "He's talented. He runs one on one. There are people who can open the door with a pass and he [is one]," Blake says.

Liverpool's Jonjo Shelvey is another name to remember, though a year older. Brooking knows, too, why Everton are particularly enthusiastic about Barkley, while England goalkeeping coach Ray Clemence has seen much potential in Birmingham City's Jack Butland, who kept goal in the Under-17s final and would also have stepped up to the Under-19 squad had he not been injured. "You see how he has developed physically in the last year or so," Clemence says.

The huge imponderable is Manchester United's midfielder Ravel Morrison – hugely gifted but from a challenging background and still learning the off-field disciplines which come with professional football. "I think he is very talented boy but he has to help himself as well," Blake says. "It's mainly for the club to deal with but we do try and work very closely with them where that is concerned."

Blake's main frustration has been Premier League clubs' unwillingness to allow his players senior action, though Brooking believes that a successful 2018 World Cup bid will help apply more pressure in that respect. "I would be very excited with this group if we won [the bid to host] 2018," he says. "It would put a lot more emphasis on how on earth we get these lads in first-team football. If we win the bid in December then you would have to really give some thought on how to channel this group through."

At a time when England scours the land for future senior management material, Blake insists he does not see himself in Capello's seat, as the first black England manager for the nation's prospective hosting of the 2018 finals. "It's not me being negative," he says. "That's just me being a realist, from my perspective. I am not saying that I don't have that ambition."

Qualification for and success in next spring's finals in Romania might create a mild change in that view. It will also settle the familiar weight of expectation upon a group of young men for whom success aged 17 offers no lasting guarantee but who just might be a new golden generation, ready to take the chances that the last one passed up.

One that got away... Why England gave up on Holtby

Sir Trevor Brooking has defended the Football Association's decision not to move more forcibly to persuade the Germany Under-21 captain Lewis Holtby to play for England, insisting the player had no desire to play for Fabio Capello.

"We knew about Lewis and the general feeling was he wanted to play for Germany," Brooking said. "Our feedback always was he was happy where he was. It would have been unfair to people who are committed [to the England youth set-up]." The 20-year-old, on loan from Schalke at FSV Mainz, has an English father and a German mother and has now committed to Germany.

Ian Herbert