What separates England from the very best runs deep - a midfield revolution is desperately needed

Why has England failed to produce so few world-class midfielders over the past few decades? This is after all a recurring issue that has reverberated through so many tournaments

The absence of a player of such elevated thought gives Gareth Southgate much to ponder (Getty)

In a backroom at Wembley, you could see how much the issue was occupying Gareth Southgate’s mind because of how little he could actually say. His England team had just lost to Spain for the same primary reason they lost the World Cup semi-final to Croatia, and it led to one primary question.

Can the national side ever bridge the gap between themselves and the very best without that truly world-class central midfielder? Can they ever command such a game without a Luka Modric or a Thiago Alcantara, without that player to keep the ball and really use it?

It again said a lot that, when asked, Southgate initially didn’t say anything. He hesitated to try and think this through and find the words, before giving an evasive answer so untypical of him.

“What I have to focus on is improving the team as much as I can.”

Except, it’s hard to see how the team will ever be improved to the level he wants it without that midfielder who so wants the ball. It’s difficult not to think the answer, really, is “no”. England won’t bridge that gap without that player.

Trying to solve this is likely to now be the single biggest issue and challenge of Southgate’s reign, but does lead to as many other angles as such a midfielder would be likely to find out on the pitch.

The first and most fundamental question is: why? Why has England failed to produce so few such players over the past few decades, let alone one for this team? This is after all a recurring issue that has reverberated through so many tournaments.

“The only one in my lifetime is [Paul] Gascoigne, and I’m not sure he was developed,” Southgate said on Saturday night. “I think he was a consequence of a unique talent… Spain have had a production line for a long period of time. Look at those who have gone and those that comes into the team. Of that type of player, they’ve produced more than any other team in the world.”

The Spanish have a culture of it, in other words, and that’s clearly what much of this comes back to. England haven’t had that culture. There’s no need here to delve back into the debate about what traditional English ideals of a midfielder have been, where action and tenacity have been historically valued over thought and technique. Indeed, this is a country more familiar with the powerful runs of a Bryan Robson rather than the precise paths of a Xavi Hernandez pass.

But, if it is cultural, then there’s another question.

Paul Gascoigne was the closest England came to that game-changing midfield star (Getty)

The Premier League has been the globe’s only truly international league for two decades, incorporating so many foreign influences and that at a time when the FA have finally looked to the influence of Spain and Germany to overhaul their coaching structures. So, why haven’t there been more continental-style midfielders coming through, if even by conditioning?

The only two after Gascoigne were Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick, and both ironically fell victim to those old-fashioned ideals. It’s just an unfortunate sting of history that England could so do with them now, so shortly after they retired.

Southgate does feel that the mere passing of time is one factor.

“I think what is happening at junior level is that there is more emphasis on technical ability… on being able to handle the ball and play. We’re seeing that with some of our junior teams. But we can see there’s a period of time for those players to come through.”

Some senior figures who work with underage players do feel, however, that the coaching structures themselves have been a factor, too, despite the rightful praise that the FA have received in this regard.

One perceived problem is that England have simply looked to mimic the best approaches from the main football countries, rather than – crucially – incorporating their best-practice examples and then looking to innovate.

England’s midfield question is Southate’s most pressing issue moving forward (Getty)

It has sometimes felt the wrong way around, as if the English structures are a top-down facsimile of a good model placed upon a generation of young players, rather than a deeper plan they have been brought up through. That has up to now led to a crucial difference.

While an entire generation of young Spanish and German players are first instilled with the base technical skills required – skills that also happen to be the fundamentals required for a midfield passer – players of the same age in England are still too shaped by physical attributes rather than technical. That has led to more fixed ideas about positions rather than just letting young players develop into a role.

“They’ve just improved their response-time at copying others,” one figure who has worked with many of England’s best young players confidentially tells the Independent. “They follow the trends of other countries quite often. So academies were producing a lot of No 10s a few years ago. But a lot of 10s would only be considered a 10 in a 4-2-3-1. Now, a lot of these young guys have struggled to make a career because clubs have switched to different formations. They don’t have the pace of modern wingers or the engines of modern midfielders.

“If you drop a player like Juan Mata back to eight, you won’t get what you need. That’s where that 10 profile falls down in modern football, when you drop them deeper to affect the game more.

“The player they’re lacking isn’t far off that type of 10, but with a little more power, endurance and explosiveness.”

More encouragingly, some players aren’t too far off, either.

Phil Foden has been tipped as one for the future – but the youngster needs more game-time (Action Images via Reuters)

Manchester City’s Phil Foden could be very well suited to the role since he can break a line, see a pass and quickly initiate attacks. He just needs more game-time. Similarly, at Arsenal, the hope is that time will be eventually afforded to Emile Smith Rowe. Initially a winger who was moved inside to accommodate Xavier Amaechi, Smith Rowe has flourished there, and has a physical burst to go with his feet.

Hopefully opportunities for these youngsters aren't limited in the way they have been for Ruben Loftus-Cheek or Harry Winks. They need time.

Southgate still has a problem until their time actually comes, though, and it leads to the most immediate question out of all this.

If he can’t definitively solve it now, how does he adapt, how does he get around the issue to get the best out of his side?

It does feel as if he is first going to have to really start thinking about tinkering with that midfield, and reshaping it to suit the opposition. That may well require a lot of experimentation with all of the midfielders, but it is surely better than the situation from Saturday where Jordan Henderson again looked ineffective in that role and the best qualities of Jesse Lingard and Dele Alli were so difficult to actually utilise that they were pointless. Southgate may have to get very creative here, to really think outside the box.

Along those lines, one temporary solution could be moving John Stones into the middle, since his passing quality arguably makes him the closest to the type of player that Southgate wants

A more extreme alternative might be for Southgate to actually come up for an alternative system for matches against the top sides, one entirely based on counter-attacking. Why, after all, play into their hands by looking to play the ball? He could have a main proactive system for most matches, and then another for the biggest matches. It’s just that carries other complications, not least the dilemma of displaying a lack of faith in an approach you are trying to get the players to believe in.

Any alternative would represent such a huge departure from the more modern and forward-thinking principles he is trying to instil, and there’s also the issue that developing this kind of tactical variation and adaptability to the required level is almost impossible in the limited time of international camps.

Either way, the absence of a player of such elevated thought now gives Southgate much to ponder.