We have a top 10 of under-capped England players. It's a list that the current crop of Maddison, Trent and co. will want to avoid.
Matt Le Tissier won 10 fewer England caps than Carlton Palmer. Man Utd’s double winning captain didn’t win any. James Maddison wants to avoid this list.England were lucky to have David Seaman’s shovel hands guarding their goal for much of the 1990s but Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan were always fortunate that if the Arsenal keeper was ever missing, they could rely on top-quality back-up.
Winterburn was by no means as imposing as Pearce but he was equally consistent and reliable, which is evidenced by his presence in George Graham and Arsene Wenger’s watertight defence through the late 1980s and the entire 1990s. At least he could share his international frustration with the fella just inside him – Steve Bould also earned just two caps, while Tony Adams and Lee Dixon helped themselves to nearly 100 between them.
So Hoddle rarely bothered with Cole, picking him only once at Le Tournoi in 1997. But others apparently shared Hoddle’s concern over Cole because it wasn’t until 2000 that the centre-forward was ever trusted to lead the line on consecutive occasions.
When Taylor got the gig in 1990, Bruce never got the call. Terry Venables picked up the phone in late 1994, but Bruce didn’t want a token cap. “He rang me and said, ‘I want to give you a cap’,” Bruce told the Daily Express. “I declined. My best mate, Bryan Robson, was Terry Venables’ assistant and he was desperate for me to get a cap. I turned it down. I was close to 35 and I said, ‘I’m sorry I would rather not have had an international career than just a sympathy cap.
Luckily for Sven, Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell weren’t let down by their bodies in the same way as King. It would have been fascinating to see what impact he would have had on his team-mates and rivals for the England shirt if they felt he was breathing down their neck and not likely to break down at any minute.
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