I agree with your post.
But, for a good educated player, his "instinct" is his role and the tactics from the team he play for.
English players are weak educated, cause their are coming out of a country where the worst youth managing is, and from a league which is tacticly the poorest of the big leagues, and which is also to blame to have an system what is the worst for their own youth. They also have less international experience, have a look at the results PL-teams get in europe. Adding this to the fact that also education for coaches are poor in England this is the result since years. Can you imagine one english player who would be in another league like La Liga or the Bundesliga and is going be there a topplayer? Can you imagine only one english coach who would rock a big league and having success in europe ,too? Me not. While spanish and german and italian players and coaches (and even players from little countrys) work everywhere due to their level, this is not happening for their english counterparts.
I watched the match on Belgium tv yesterday, who have actually quite good football reports and analysis, but they are not even close in arrogance to the Dutch when it comes to management history, education and development. At half time one the pundits said that Hodgson was an oldfashioned English manager who would do exactly as they learned on the Belgian managers education in the fifties: one sub at half time and wait a quarter of on hour to see how it works out, and then the next sub in the 60th minute. I'm not saying this is a bad rule in general, but if you have a manager who gains an advantage by what he can do and who reacts to an unexpected scoreline, he won't be as predictable and be capable of more and different decisions.
Yh I also think having watched almost every game at the Euros our technical ability looks really poor. Basic things, which we take for granted, like a good first touch, winning freekicks when under pressure (vital at this level), passing with speed and shocking decision making (Harry Kane lining up a freekick with every single person watching knowing he would not score comes to mind).
When players feel the pressure the simplest things can go wrong. That they're bad at passing shouldn't really be surprising, because a bit of a passing game gets booed when it's not immediately perfect going forward. I know a lot of criticism on Utd's style of play was justified, but in England people get very impatient with passing very quickly, while on the continent, they get impatient when a team can't string a few passes together. So it gets very difficult for players to develop themselves in neat passing, especially from the back.
Playing for England should be the highest honor for any player and we are simply a group of individuals that think we are a lot better than we are. Choose a manager with a system and play players who fit that system. If the players can't/won't adjust, drop them. Stop picking players on the club they play for and pick on form.
But finding the players for a good system will be difficult. I think it's now almost 15 years ago that I heard Alan Hansen complaining about a Bulgarian defender playing a pass into the half space with the outside of the boot over 40 yards, and England not having defenders like that. Does England have any defenders that have ever used the outside of the boot for anything else but a foul now? Of course their fist task is just defending, but if English managers don't pick players who can play a bit too and therefore compromise a tiny bit on pure defending qualities, you can never play modern football.
Imo the national football team is always the reflection of a national football culture. You can't just put an alien style on top of a whole football culture. The new style of Germany that emerged in it strong form only the last few years started after the desastrous euro 2000 for them. It was the German association's decision and it was a seperate decision from hiring the manager, they started with the youth academy's, their leagues and manager's education back then. And I'm afraid the punditry is part of the football culture too, or at least a reflection of it. If the reasoning from people like Shearer, Soeness etc. gets accepted as sensible by English football in general, I'm afraid it's going to be very hard for the FA to change things for the long term.
