Like most things in the age of social and mass media, the reputations of footballers and their abilities are front and centre for those of us who deal with the ups and downs of the beautiful game. Moreover, this same phenomenon that entraps our fascination can often be the cause of our ire and determine our mood for the rest of the day and in some cases, the week. I digress, what we need to speak about more is the overestimation of players ability due to social media and how its algorithm actively and vigorously works to entrench us into separate warring tribes. This same algorithm then typically lands us in an echo chamber that only work to reinforce our predetermined beliefs or ideas.

Hence why the case of Southgate’s England’s Euro 2024 team is the perfect team to wrestle with the idea of the social media player. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that this England team overall is the best team to put on the 3 Lions in the last 15 – 20 years. Furthermore, there is also nothing to suggest they could not have won July’s final on grit and talent alone. Although, like the old cliché, it must be asked – is this England side and squad as good as people believe? And if so, was the full 26-man selection of players too good?

Alex Ferguson is believed to have once said, “give me Zidane and 10 pieces of stick and I will win you a Champions League”. Naturally, one must assume that Ferguson was talking in tongue and cheek was solely aiming to praise Zizou’. However, after watching this England team at the Euros, Fergie was not too far wrong in his analysis of football.

England started the Euros trying to fit in Bellingham, Foden, and Saka across the attacking three with Trent and Rice behind them, with Kane leading the line. Although much has been said of Southgate’s tactics, the fact there was at times four players, Saka, Kane, Jude, and Foden all either cutting in and sitting back to get a shot away or get more involved in the game does indeed show wither a stubbornness that we’ve seen before from Southgate or, something many would consider much worse in the modern system based game, pigeonholing your best players into the 11. I believe this happened at least in the first couple of games with starting Trent in midfield, believing a player can be a competent centre midfielder simply because they can pass, is tactical naivety at its finest and to say that Foden, Bellingham, and Saka did not deserve to play would be wrong too – each of them had seasons to remember. But choosing personnel over system certainly caused England to play beneath their best, despite the fatigued players across all teams we saw at this Euros. But are they, and the England squad more generally, as good as social media would have us believe?

The furore within and without the English camp after James McClean had the audacity to call out Declan Rice’s below par performances was something to behold. It was reminiscent of when Guardiola stated Wilshere was nothing special and that there were many of his quality and ilk in the Barcelona reserve side. But often, and what is underrepresented in football commentary is the over estimation of players simply because of social media and FT (Football Twitter/X*) more generally. A typical account may have the name of @DeccersTekkers or @FantasticFoden, which only attracts other likeminded England or City fans who would tend to agree with the page owner’s stance on their ‘idolo’ being as good as they think due to the tendency of the algorithm to create vacuous vacuum chambers. So, in hindsight, Pep was right (again), and one can make this point simply by when Rodri went off injured, which was met with much elation by the English commentary teams on both ITV and BBC. What should have been a game changing moment, turned out to be a mere fleeting moment in an overall entertaining final. Rodri’s replacement, Zubimendi did not cost £100 million and plays for the sixth best team in the Spanish League. Yet, he made Rice look far from the player British pundits and social media would have you believe him to be. Which goes back to the premise of Guardiola’s comment, there seems to be many Declan Rice standard players in Spain who are selling for far less than £100 million and are underrepresented in the hellscape of football debates on X. One person mentioned to me how people view Declan Rice, and other overly expensive players, is akin to how lads of a certain demographic and often fellow footballers view ugly designer clothes; just because they are expensive, they believe it to make players and the clothes better or more attractive than they truly are.