In celebration of the sporting decade that is coming to a close, writers from The Athletic have been picking their teams of the 2010s — here, Daniel Taylor names his England XI…
Goalkeeper: Joe Hart
The saddest thing about Hart’s decline is that there will be so many people who need reminding that, in happier times, he was once a goalkeeper with realistic credentials to be considered among the best in the world.
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Hart’s international career wound up with a 0-0 draw against Brazil in November 2017. That was his 43rd clean sheet for England in 75 caps, meaning he accumulated more shut-outs than David Seaman (40/75), Gordon Banks (35/73) and Ray Clemence (27/61), with only Peter Shilton (66/125) ahead of him on the list. Hart also had the eighth-longest international career of any England goalkeeper, lasting nine years and 166 days.
True, he did become accident-prone and unreliable, and who can forget Andrea Pirlo putting him in his place with a Panenka after the goalkeeper’s Grobbelaar-lite antics at Euro 2012, but there were plenty of highlights, too — not least a game in Slovenia in 2016 and one save in particular that might not be remembered with the same nostalgia as Banks v Pele 1970, but was very nearly as spectacular.
Right-back: Kyle Walker
It isn’t easy understanding Walker’s sudden exclusion from the England set-up and he could be forgiven for feeling aggrieved bearing in mind he has been such a key player for Manchester City and, previously, Tottenham Hotspur.
Perhaps it is just the consequence of Gareth Southgate, the England manager, having so many options for the team’s right-back spot and an unusually careless performance from Walker against Holland during the Nations League finals in the summer.
That was the last time Walker started a match for England and the future now for the national team surely involves Trent Alexander-Arnold in that position. Overall, though, Walker warrants a place in this XI on the basis of the 48 caps he has won since making his debut under Fabio Capello in 2011.
Centre-back: Gary Cahill
“When I hear about a defender who is good on the ball, I think: ‘Oh Christ,’” Jack Charlton, an England centre-half from another era, once remarked (in a discussion about Rio Ferdinand). It is a great quote. But it is a different time now and Cahill lost his place at Chelsea, and then England, largely because he was not considered to be cultured enough in possession.
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All the same, he still managed a total of 61 caps and no one bar Wayne Rooney has made more appearances for England in this decade. Cahill must have done something right, bearing in mind he was selected by five different England managers. Yes, Ferdinand was the classier player but the former Manchester United man made only five of his 81 appearances from 2010 onwards and, for that reason, Cahill makes the cut.
Centre-back: John Terry
You didn’t necessarily have to like the man to recognise why he warranted a place in the team. And there were times, undoubtedly, when Terry made it difficult to embrace him. He lost the England captaincy 36 days into the decade because of all that business with Wayne Bridge’s ex-partner. There was a rogue and near-mutinous interview during the 2010 World Cup and, pre-Euro 2012, a court case for allegedly racially abusing Anton Ferdinand (Terry was acquitted only to be charged with misconduct by the Football Association and eventually banned for four games).
Six years on, it still feels unsatisfactory that the trial appeared to have greater ramifications for Rio Ferdinand’s international career, as Anton’s brother, rather than the man whose supporters celebrated the not-guilty verdict by opening a bottle of pink cava in the public gallery of Westminster magistrates’ court. Terry finished his England career on 78 caps, four major tournaments and more controversies than he would probably wish to remember. But there was no getting away from one fact: he was a brilliantly combative and inspirational centre-half.
Left-back: Ashley Cole
If nothing else, at least English football came to realise how nonsensical it was for the Wembley crowd — or at least a good proportion of it — to boo Cole after making a rick of a backpass, leading to a goal (albeit a largely irrelevant one), in a 5-1 victory against Kazakhstan in 2008.
Cole spent a long time as the player the crowd disliked the most. He was a scapegoat for the team’s erratic performances and it wasn’t a quick process before the fans at Wembley wised up and started to recognise him for what, in truth, he always was: a wonderfully talented left-back with genuine credentials to be considered among the best players England have ever produced for that position.
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Central midfield: Jordan Henderson
No doubt there will be plenty who disagree with the inclusion of the Liverpool captain, particularly when it comes at the expense of a 106-cap player in the mould of Frank Lampard. But, then again, Henderson has probably grown accustomed to having his credentials questioned and, if this England XI needs a defensive midfielder, the first point to consider here is that he has started more games in that position for the national team than anyone else over the last decade. His first cap was in November 2010, he is still a fixture in the squad nine years later and he also, lest it be forgotten, helped the team reach a World Cup semi-final last year.
Central midfield: Steven Gerrard
At the risk of being slightly unfair, perhaps it was a reflection of Gerrard’s international career that it ended so harrowingly for him at the 2014 World Cup. His mistakes had led to the team’s elimination and it is difficult to forget the scene on the morning before the team flew back.
They had been in Brazil barely a week and Gerrard was slumped in his chair, wearing several days’ worth of stubble, staring at the walls of a windowless room at the team’s training centre. He was “hurting bad, broken”. That was his last involvement and, knowing how tremendously hard he always was on himself, it is safe to assume it still pains him now that he did not always play as magnificently for England as he did for Liverpool.
Equally, a bit too much can be made of that sometimes and it would be wrong to think Gerrard should be consumed with regret. He was still an automatic pick for England. He wore the shirt with distinction for the most part and, with 114 caps, there is only Peter Shilton, Wayne Rooney and David Beckham above him on the all-time list of appearance-makers.
Right forward: Raheem Sterling
The days have passed when Sterling found it difficult to replicate his performances for Manchester City on to the international stage. Yet his inclusion in this England XI was not entirely straightforward bearing in mind he once endured a 27-match streak without scoring.
That run lasted three years and, though it can feel like a trick of the mind now, there was a lot of debate during the last World Cup about whether he should be removed from the team. Sterling has now scored ten times in 11 appearances since that tournament and, after the game against Kosovo in September, Gareth Southgate was asked whether the player could eventually take over from Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the outstanding footballer of his generation.
A little much, perhaps, but maybe we can forgive the risk of hyperbole when Sterling has flourished so brilliantly for club and country, particularly when he has also emerged as one of the England team’s leading voices against racism.
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No 10 role: Wayne Rooney
Of course, there will always be regrets. Rooney found it difficult to light up the major tournaments, particularly the 2010 World Cup, and his more exhilarating performances tended to be much earlier in his career. Remember Rooney as an 18-year-old at Euro 2004? The baby-faced assassin (or assassin-faced baby) described by Sven-Goran Eriksson as the English Pele?
From 2010, it was never quite so exciting and, to be picky, a sizeable proportion of his 53 goals came against the kind of obliging opponents that can make international football feel so lopsided sometimes. That, however, was partly the case with Sir Bobby Charlton when he set the record at the 49-goal mark.
Rooney’s achievements for England might never have involved going beyond a quarter-final but the fact the FA asked him to step out of international retirement for a farewell appearance at Wembley in November 2018 — an invitation that has never been afforded to anybody else — sums up his contribution.
Left forward: Danny Welbeck
File alongside Jordan Henderson as another controversial choice. Yet please also consider that Welbeck’s 16 goals from 42 appearances for England compares favourably to, say, Raheem Sterling, who has scored a dozen times in 55 caps.
Welbeck is duly in the list of England’s top 30 all-time scorers, with the same number as Tommy Taylor and Tony Woodcock, and a few places higher than, among others, Teddy Sheringham and Trevor Francis.
He didn’t just score in the irrelevant matches either: only four of his goals were in friendlies. Not bad for a player whose career has been besieged by injuries and whose inclusion in the England team, winning 30 of his caps under Roy Hodgson, was often held up as a sign that it was not a golden age for the national team.
Striker: Harry Kane
Has anybody mentioned Iceland yet? The image of Kane trying a shot from 40 yards in the dying minutes of that ordeal — followed by mutinous chants of “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” from many England supporters — still lingers in the memory from Euro 2016. Though, to give him his due, he was not the only one to have a bad time that night and two years later he certainly made up for it by winning the Golden Boot at the World Cup.
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Kane has now scored 32 times for England in 45 appearances, including 14 in one ten-game burst, and that puts him joint-12th in the all-time list of scorers. In the last international break, he moved ahead of Frank Lampard, Alan Shearer, Nat Lofthouse and Sir Tom Finney in England’s all-time scorers list. Wayne Rooney, to put it in context, had managed only 14 goals at the 43-cap mark. No wonder, therefore, that Gareth Southgate felt emboldened enough recently to say that if Kane, aged 26, can stay fit, there must be a reasonable chance of him taking Rooney’s record.
(Photo: Lampard, Welbeck, Hart, Gerrard, Rooney and Leighton Baines celebrate victory in 2014. Credit: Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
