Too Early for High Expectations

As it always is whenever England take on an international tournament, there is bound to be a fair degree of hype over the Under 17 team taking part in the World Cup in Mexico. And with six Liverpool players in the English squad, expectations will inevitably rise especially if England do well.

Yet the reality of this tournament is that it doesn’t really provide a gauge for future success. You can look at a player like Cesc Fabregas, who won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s top player (and finished as top scorer) in 2003, and see this as justification for it’s predictive capacity. But then you look to two years earlier and see that Florent Sinama Pongolle won the same honour.

By that time, Sinama Pongolle was already (virtually) a Liverpool player and the ease with which he dominated the tournament – the nine goals that he scored remains a record total - was seen as confirmation of his world class potential. Eight years later, however, and he’s just spent a season on loan at a mid-table Spanish side where he scored just four goals. Sinama Pongolle has turned out to be a decent player but nothing more than that; certainly not the kind of player that so many had predicted he would become.

What happened to him was injuries and lack of playing time at a crucial stage in his career stunted his development. Also, nature happened as he failed to develop enough physically which that he wasn’t suited to play as a striker where he had initially impressed whilst he lacked the skill to really make a mark as a winger.

There have been as many players who have turned out like Sinama Pongolle (Sergio Santamaria from the 1999 edition) as there are those who have gone on to excel (Anderson from 2005). And that’s simply by looking at the Golden Ball winners. Dig deeper and many more such stories emerge.

In 2003, the Spanish team containing Cesc Fabregas lost in the final to Brazil. Apart from Fabregas, out of the twenty-two who began the final only Brazilian midfielder Sandro has really made much of an impact. Move forward to the next final and only Anderson has emerged as a top class player and he was on the losing side. Carlos Vela and Giovanni dos Santos, on the other hand, were outstanding as Mexico won yet neither one has delivered on that promise.

All of this has to be kept in mind this summer. Regardless of whatever England do, other than added experience that helps in their development, it means very little for the players’ futures.

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