Fabio Capello’s assertion this week that a clutch of Manchester City players could form the nucleus of a successful England team not only underlined the new status of City in the panoply of English football; it also brought back into focus a time-honoured principle of international team building.
Players who train together every day and play together every matchday can, if they are good enough, generate a chemistry – a familiarity with a colleague’s game and anticipation of another’s runs and passes – that can bond a team and spur it to success.
Capello cited European and world champions Spain as a unit built predominantly around Barcelona players; and also noted the influence of Juventus players on Italy’s World Cup winning squad of 2006.
With City’s Joe Hart, Joleon Lescott, Gareth Barry, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Adam Johnson and James Milner available to him, it is not too fanciful to envisage Eastlands being a major source of supply as Capello strives to end his England tenure on a high by winning Euro 2012.
Graham Lister of Goal.com writes of how Capello's call-ups of Manchester City stars resembles a time of former England teams that were littered with a nucleus of one club.
The last and only time the Three Lions won a major tournament they famously had three West Ham United club-mates in key positions. Captain and central defender Bobby Moore, goalscoring midfielder Martin Peters and hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst formed the spine of Alf Ramsey’s team.
Indeed, in London’s East End they still talk proudly of how the Hammers won the World Cup for England in 1966.
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