English football has a proud history of midfielders, most of the similar type – hard, strong. It’s amusing that they failed to recognise the kind of midfielder which could’ve landed them international success. Michael Carrick was one of a kind.
“You can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it’s not a mistake, it’s a choice.”
― Steven Denn
The state of English football in the 2000s can only be described as a self-inflicted wound. It had a bloody nose, a cracked skull, and a concussion obtained by running headfirst into the same brick wall over and over. Nobody could deny that the English midfield had stagnated beyond a point of no return, nobody but the very beings in the centre of said murky stagnation. There was an identity crisis in an area of the pitch meant to control the game and take it to the opponent. While the Premier League was seeing an influx of European coaches, ideals and tactics; none of these percolated through to the national team. There was a tactical revolution sweeping the lands, and the defensive midfielder was the bedrock of this change. Meanwhile, the medieval managers of England stuck to their tradition of deploying box-to-box midfielders, and their cavalry included players like Lampard, Gerrard and Ince, who could pound every blade of grass on the pitch, and when they couldn’t get close to the ball, pound the opponent’s Achilles into submission. Albert Einstein appeared in their dreams screaming ‘Insanity’ at the top of his voice, even as England expected different results by repeating the same self-defeating patterns. They ignored the type of player who could make a difference.
English football chose to remain second grade compared to the top continental teams by not recognising a gem of a player, not just once, but twice. As irony would have it, both players plied their trade at the same club. They won multiple titles at the same club, but the bigwigs at the Football Association couldn’t care less. Let’s face the facts though. In the face of Lampard’s industry and Gerrard’s machismo, the elegance of Scholes and Carrick had no place, surely. While the former hung up his boots with the departure of Sir Alex at Manchester United, Michael Carrick is set to lower the curtains on a glittering career at the end of the 2018 football season.