prateik
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Jacob Steinberg has written a bit about him
Still cant understand picking Parker over him.. scotty fecking parker.
England should have picked Carrick
In the world of the Hollywood passer, it is a crying shame that Michael Carrick has only ever been an extra for England. A player who has been a key figure in a Manchester United side who have won four Premier League titles and one Champions League since joining them in 2006 has never been deemed good enough to represent his country on a regular basis. How strange. After all, whenever England huff and puff to another sweaty tournament exit, the criticism always centres around their inability to keep the ball, which makes the constant exclusion of Carrick, a smooth-passing metronomic presence in midfield, even harder to understand.
So confident was Carrick that he would not be picked for Euro 2012, he informed the Football Association several months ago that he did not want to be on the bench for England, which meant that Roy Hodgson had to name Jordan Henderson on the standby list instead. Jordan Henderson. "I wouldn't dream of putting Michael Carrick on a standby list after he's made it clear in the past he doesn't want to be involved like that," Hodgson said. "I'd have to be convinced he was better than the four [central midfielders] I've selected, and that he'd be happy to come out of retirement." He shouldn't have needed much convincing. After his exploits for Chelsea from March onwards, there is no doubt that Frank Lampard deserves his place in the squad, and probably the starting lineup. However, the claims of Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker are less obvious.
In Hodgson's first game against Norway, the familiar failings were there. Gerrard galumphed about the place, overhitting passes, conceding possession and injuring a Norwegian with a robust challenge. Parker blocked shots and disrupted moves, but at international level he will not offer much else. Barry came on at half-time, stank the place out, and then departed with a groin injury that could rule him out of the tournament, so England ended the game with a central midfield of James Milner and Henderson. Overall a side as limited as Norway, who have not qualified for a tournament for 12 years, enjoyed 56% of the possession. And still there is no place for Carrick in Hodgson's beloved two banks of four, where perspiration has been valued more highly than inspiration.
Carrick's reputation took a huge dent when he was made to look second-rate by Xavi and Andrés Iniesta in the Champions League final in 2009. But then, who does shine against those two? Carrick took a while to recover from that ordeal, but while there have been doubts over his character, it surely says something for his mental strength that he excelled for United last season. Carrick is far from perfect. With his elegant, leggy stride, he should dominate games more, and he is prone to bouts of invisibleness. He ought to score more as well. But mostly he suffers because a lot of his good work goes unappreciated and is not as eye-catching as Gerrard's Roy Race schtick, which tends to be horribly out of place at international football.
Xabi Alonso, a similar player to Carrick, admires his positional awareness which allows him to always be in the right place at the right time. It means he doesn't have to get his shorts dirty. It doesn't mean he's lazy, or a wimp; quite the opposite, in fact. "Carrick is a player who makes those around him play, regardless of the fact that maybe he is not the player that shines the most individually," said Alonso before Spain's friendly against England last November.
"It is more important to find players who can build a team rather than simply finding two very good players and putting them in the team even if they don't play so well together."
Those comments echo the praise Paul Scholes, another footballer's footballer, has received from legendary foreign players down the years, and yet even he retired from England duty in 2004, tired at being shunted around in order to shoe-horn Gerrard and Lampard into the side.
No one is pretending that Carrick is in the same class as Xavi or Andrea Pirlo and it would be asinine to claim that his presence alone would instantly turn England into tiki-taka specialists. Far from it. Yet when they face France in the first game at the Euros, defeat is likely and complaints will be made about their technical deficiencies and inability to string more than three passes together. Carrick, more qualified than any other Englishman to provide those qualities, will be on the beach.
Still cant understand picking Parker over him.. scotty fecking parker.