By Mike O’Brien
England’s Euro 2012 exit is naturally bound to spark the age old debates amongst English fans and even officials as to why they appear to fail at International tournaments. So I thought I’d take a look into what is preventing England’s superstars from performing when they pull on the white shirt.
Exhaustion
There is the ever existent belief that players are overworked. Most England players ply their trade in the Premier League which consists of 38 games a season, plus FA and League cup commitments and for some, their European competitions can result in players competing in 50+ games a season. It is hard to argue that exhaustion isn’t a reason for England’s constant failure. This season alone the likes of Gerrard, Henderson, and Johnson participated in full domestic schedules, getting to both the Carling cup and FA Cup finals with Liverpool. Meanwhile the likes of Ashley Cole and John Terry had victorious FA Cup and Champions League campaigns.
So a case can certainly be made for exhaustion when it comes to summer tournaments. Many fans called for a winter break in Premier League proceedings after Spain won both the Euro’s and the World Cup consecutively and gave birth to a great and innovative form of flowing football. But this would do more harm than good to English players in my opinion. At the end of the day, the players are going to have to play 38 league games. A three week break isn’t going to change that and would in fact mean the players would be playing games more often and would probably result in players being even more tired at the end of the season. The only way to counter this is to literally copy