Before this fantastic World Cup is confined to the annals of history and our bout of England-bashing is put under lock and key for another couple of years, I have to get the following off my chest:
Why oh why is the England team of about 10 -15 years ago referred to as the golden generation ? Are we really saying that the likes of Lampard, Rooney, Gerrard etc can be compared favourably to the likes of Modric, Mbappe, De Bruyne, Hazard of today's teams or were they comparing them to previous England players ?
I can only assume that as the pundits lamented the fact that those "great" English players
should have but didn't win one of either the World Cup or the Euros, they were by definition putting them on the same level as the world's top players.
You would think that all so-called pundits would be able to grasp a very simple truth - when a good player is in a team that contains genuine superstars, it is much easier to play football at a higher level than if you are in a team of lesser mortals. That's England's problem in a nutshell and will only improve if by any chance they can unearth players of the genuine world class, such as Iniesta, Pirlo and dare I say it, Gareth Bale.