Graeme Souness doubts Scotland’s chances against England

Scot on the rocks: Graeme Souness was a midfielder capable of shaping matches

PHIL YEOMANS

A prominent place in that tiny elite must be given to Souness, certainly one of the four or five best Scottish players of my lifetime. With his formidable technical assets vitally enhanced by an innate understanding of the fluctuating priorities of positional play, a spontaneous sense of where he could do most to damage the opposition or protect his own side’s interests, he was a midfielder capable of shaping matches. When it came to what works on the pitch, Souness knew the story, and he radiated an influence that often lifted the performances of those around him.

In the Scotland team, his effectiveness was unavoidably muted by the general shortcomings and it was, of course, with Liverpool that he was enabled to show his true worth. Liverpool won five English league championships and collected the European Cup three times during the seven seasons he spent as a key member of a squad replete with remarkable figures, not least his countrymen Kenny Dalglish and Alan Hansen. But disappointments at international level never diminished his commitment to Scotland’s cause, not even the pain of being only once on the winning side in six meetings with England. The men facing him then were sure to feel the force of a competitiveness sometimes expressed with sufficient harshness to make his staunchest admirers shudder in sympathy with the crunchee.

He maintains it is a myth that the Scots have always brought more nationalistic hostility than the English to such fixtures, insisting that for an hour and a half the bitterness of the antagonism is very much mutual. It is, he suggests, an intensity too basic to require the fuel of World Cup implications but acknowledges, without optimism, that we should expect Saturday’s outcome to be determined by other factors. He thinks it’s improbable that any amount of lionheartedness from his heirs in Scotland jerseys will compensate for a discrepancy in skills.

“We all know the old fighting spirit and never-say-die attitude take you only so far,” he said. “England were flattered by a 3-0 scoreline in the equivalent qualifying match at Wembley last November but the victory was deserved. And they won’t have any fears about going to Glasgow if they remember what happened in the friendly at Celtic Park in 2014. When England beat Scotland 3-1 then, it looked like a team from the top half of the Premier League putting away a mid-table Championship side.

“The English lads won’t have the feeling they’re going into the lions’ den. They’re entitled to believe they can go up there and turn Scotland over. For us to get a result, we must have an exceptionally good day and they must have a bad one. Let’s hope Harry Kane is taking a lot of corners.”

Kane is an obvious example of the kind of player he foresees establishing separation between the teams on Saturday, so anything that restricts the Tottenham forward’s opportunities to exploit the widely recognised vulnerability of Scotland’s central defence would be welcome for Souness the supporter. “In our football, we too readily lavish praise on individuals and give them exaggerated status,” he said. “But there’s no denying the genuineness of Kane’s progress. He has scored more than 20 Premier League goals in three successive seasons and, whatever can be said about that league, scoring with such consistency isn’t easy there.”

Before that England-Scotland collision at Wembley last autumn, Souness branded the teams lining up “arguably the worst” to have appeared in a confrontation of the two nations, and in the interim he has found little cause to ­hail signs of substantial raising of overall standards. He is, however, impressed by the way a couple of Englishmen other than Kane are developing, admitting it may seem strange that Gary Cahill is one of them: “While Chelsea were dominating the Premier League season just finished, most of the attention at the back was on David Luiz because of how successfully he was overcoming his previous difficulties with adjusting to the game in this country. But Luiz was benefiting hugely from having two Steady Eddies, Cahill and Cesar Azpilicueta, alongside him.

“Now that the big presence of John Terry is no longer there, Cahill has emerged as a real warrior centre-half and a man of importance both for his club and for England. He is resolute and if what is needed to prevent a goal is putting his head where many wouldn’t risk their feet, he’ll do that. How often do you see him shaking his head after taking an elbow or some other blow? He is the sort of defender who earns gratitude from teammates.”

There can be no trace of surprise about another source of Souness enthusiasm. “Dele Alli is somebody you wouldn’t, as a midfielder, want to play against. He would be forever taking you back into your own box, and always with the danger that he would produce a goal. He reminds me a bit of the effect Terry McDermott had for our Liverpool team. Terry Mac took not only his marker back towards the opposition goal but the covering player, too, so that he kept emptying the midfield and creating space for me to operate. It’s not just the talent Alli has already shown as a 21-year-old but his constantly positive application of it that justifies the belief he can be an influential international player.”

Shouting match: disappointments at international level never diminished Souness’ commitment to Scotland

MARK LEECH

In contrast, Souness discerns nothing but discouraging indicators in the career of another vaunted prospect, Ross Barkley, offering a brisk rebuttal to anyone who thinks England have been notably weakened by Barkley’s absence from the squad because of injury: “There were high expectations of him but nobody can claim they are being met. He is too easy to play against, very poor at making positions, tending to go towards the ball all the time. And when he gives up possession he doesn’t know how to react by finding the space that has to be filled. I haven’t seen any improvement in the past two seasons.”

If that sounds downbeat, the tone was almost funereal once the subject was a more famous absentee from the Hampden fray. Souness is too realistic to regard the marginalising of Wayne Rooney by Jose Mourinho at Manchester United and the England manager Gareth Southgate as anything but the rational consequence of undeniable decline. But the old player in him empathises with a professional suffering the hurt of “going from being the first name on the team sheet to being picked reluctantly or not at all”.

Back on the practicalities, he says that, with England, there was managerial tardiness in recognising the extent to which Rooney’s selection had become questionable. “Roy Hodgson was slow in responding to the evidence. That was understandable to a degree. Dropping Rooney was a difficult call because of his goalscoring record. Then there’s the familiar inclination to be loyal to a long-serving player. Still, we’ve also got to suspect that Roy, who wasn’t a man to court controversy, was concerned about the media firestorm likely to be caused by leaving Rooney out.

“But great managers make ruthless decisions — when it’s your time to go, you’re a goner — and that one should probably have been made earlier. Rooney has had an outstanding career and it’s sad that he seems to be fading out of the picture at 31. I hit that age in May 1984, at the end of what was my best ­season for Liverpool. In his top years, Rooney was definitely somebody you’d want with you, fabulous to be around. You had the impression then that he had to be chased off the training ground. He deserves plenty of credit for those record goals totals with United and England, though the quality of opponents must be factored into the number in ­internationals.

“He scored only once in the World Cup finals and his experiences on football’s biggest stage were generally miserable. Amid the shambles of England’s failure in South Africa, he sometimes looked as if he couldn’t trap a medicine ball. He had a lot of glory days and I would never diminish his achievements. But I don’t think he ever reached greatness.”

Rising collectively above the ordinary is, he is convinced, enough of a challenge for the squads about to represent their countries in Glasgow. He has long held the view that aspirations of flourishing at the global level of competition can be entertained only if a nation is able to field seven or eight players so gifted that they could contend seriously for places in the world’s most powerful teams.

“At our strongest, Scotland had perhaps two or three men who would have stood a good chance of getting into the best of teams — I can’t come up with a period when we had four — and that meant qualifying for the World Cup finals was about as much as we merited. For many years we haven’t had any players in that category, and it is hardly a shock that we’ve been shut out of those finals since 1998 and are struggling to qualify for Russia in 2018.

“England, not surprisingly, have usually been better off than Scotland in terms of those special players who could have got into the leading national teams. They might have four or five, which gave them the right to expect to go as far as the World Cup quarter-finals, and maybe very rarely a semi-final. When they won the trophy in 1966 they had a couple, Bobby Charlton and Bobby Moore, who would have been hard to keep out of any team in any era, several others who could be rated exceptional — and the advantage of playing every match at Wembley.

“The present crop don’t persuade me they are within shouting distance of the quality needed to cause a stir in the World Cup finals. But at least they are heading there. It’s very difficult to be confident that Scotland’s chances of making it will be improved on Saturday.”

While conceding there would have to be multiple strands to any attempt at explaining the virtual drying up of ­Scottish football’s traditional capacity to deliver a reliable trickle of extraordinarily brilliant players, he points to a social phenomenon he is certain has lengthened the odds against strengthening the game’s bloodline in his homeland: “We’ve never had any major influx of immigrants from outside these islands, the kind of addition that has had such an impact in other countries. Think of what it has done for the football prowess of the Dutch, the French, the English and, with the Turkish influence particularly, for the Germans, too. Nothing like that has happened in Scotland.”

Reports from the north tell us that, whatever the result of the imminent action, it should demonstrate the promise of two young Celtic players — the ­midfielder Stuart Armstrong and, if ­sufficiently recovered from a nasty mouth injury, the full-back Kieran Tierney, who turns 20 tomorrow. Souness will be an intrigued scrutineer. “This will be an acid test,” he said. “Though England are anything but marvellous, they have every reason to believe they are facing a lesser team. When the opposition are inferior, you make sure you’re at it from the kick-off, putting them under pressure, finding out if they can handle your tempo.

“If you’re the superior team, your touch and control will be better, your decision-making quicker. All the time you will be asking: ‘Can you play at our pace?’ If they can’t, they’ll keep giving the ball back to you. Perhaps that is the pattern we will be seeing at Hampden.”

At that point Graeme Souness was making me wonder about the wisdom of having decided to go through lunch without strong drink.

Souness on Ross Barkley and Wayne Rooney

There have been high expectations of the Everton midfielder but nobody can possibly claim that they are being met. He is too easy to play against, is very poor at making positions, and tends to go towards the ball all the time. And when he gives up possession he doesn’t know how to react by finding the space that has to be filled. Sadly, I haven’t seen any improvement in Barkley during the past two seasons.

Rooney has had an outstanding career and it’s sad he is fading out of the picture at 31. In his top years, he was somebody that you would want with you. But he scored only once in World Cup finals and his experiences on the biggest stage were miserable. Amid the shambles of England’s failure in South Africa in 2010, he sometimes looked as if he couldn’t trap a medicine ball. I don’t think that he ever reached greatness.