All the Way: Aston Villa v England

All The Way

Aston Villa v England

One of the perennial pub debates among football fans is club versus country, or more specifically whether you would take a league title for your club over England success. It’s taken as a sign of the times, like binge-drinking or being unable to say who’s currently Number One, that the overwhelming majority of people would take a trophy for their club without a second’s hesitation. Myself, I blame the dearth of good World Cup tunes. It’s obvious that as pop acts stopped producing football anthems, our national teams have got worse.

Nostalgia aside, we assume that there was a point after football was invented in 1992 that fans became as mercenary as club owners, and the Corinthian ideal of a national side didn’t fit. But the flipside to that is to assume that before said date, England as a whole was geared towards lifting either a World Cup or a European Championships and anybody who said otherwise was a traitor to rank alongside Lord Haw Haw.

Put like that, it’s not hard to deduce that English attitudes to their national side have always been the same: we would like them to do well, but not to the detriment of our club. It’s clubs that have to pick up the pieces for injuries or loss of form after the fateful penalty or red card. And being territorial animals, humans will always want to keep the glory in as small a group as possible. It’s not as special when you have to share a trophy with fifty-odd million as it is within one city or town.

What has changed, based on wide-ranging comments across forums and phone-ins, is that Villa fans have gone beyond apathy about the English national side and turned to full-blown hostility. Many are convinced that not only have England preferred mediocre players over Villa’s more obvious gems, but that once picked by the national side, those players are plucked by the ravenous noveaux-riche, using their own England stars as fifth columnists.

Whilst there is paranoia smeared all over that theory, there is also a large dollop of truth captured within it. Over the past decade we have ended up selling Gareth Southgate, Ugo Ehiogu, Gareth Barry, James Milner, Ashley Young and Stewart Downing, five of whom saw their first England caps come as Aston Villa players. Forget West Ham being the Academy of Football – it looks as though Bodymoor Heath is the finishing school. Of those, only Ashley Young left for a team that was anywhere near challenging for domestic or European honours at the time of departure.

Though there were extenuating circumstances to most of those departures (Southgate saw most of his England career out with Villa; Young left with a year to go on his contract), it’s arguable the last four departees returned to B6 from international duty as changed men. Let’s take Gareth Barry as an example. He made his Villa debut in 1998 and was called up for England in 2000, taking in the Euros alongside Stephen Gerrard as an unused sub. However, while his benchmate saw his club form rewarded with international appearances, Barry continued along the same furrow of club excellence, safe in the knowledge the clueless Keegan and Eriksson wouldn’t change their minds about him. Steve McLaren looked set to do the same until, up to his neck in the brown stuff, he sparingly used Barry as a substitute before granting him a start in a Euro 2008 qualifier against Israel.

Barry excelled in a 3-0 win, displaying the cool precision and assured distribution which he’d displayed for years at Villa Park. The next summer, Barry asked for a transfer out of Villa, “opening his heart” to the News of the World about his need to play for Liverpool. An unbecoming and childish stand-off ensued at the gates of Bodymoor Heath with Barry banned from training. The player stayed for another season before leaving for Manchester City and making all his childhood dreams come true.

It’s stretching the point to claim that the honey poured into his ear at England camps turned Barry’s head, as he was honest enough to say he was after Champions League football as the reason for his request to leave. But being one of the only players without a club success in a squad made up of European medal-winners and Arsenal players must have made him question his career arc. Add to that the inevitable garlands in the national press pricking the ears of previously deaf suitors, and you have a recipe for an uncomfortable picture between a new chairman and his manager.

The same pattern was followed by Young, Milner and Downing, all of whom have met with varying levels of hostility on departure. In the first two cases, it’s sad to see that for their newer, shinier clubs, they are played in exactly the same ways as they are for their country, which is out of their better positions. For Young and Milner, playing for England has led to riches and trophies but I would imagine a fair degree of restriction which they didn’t have at Villa Park. In the case of Downing, being shunted out of the England squad and now Liverpool’s reserve left-back, the result is merely hilarious.

So in the past four or five years, Villa have no reason to wish England anything but ill. Four players who our side was built around were captured, with an England call-up arguably aiding the process. But then again, what good have England ever done for Villa? Consistently, our legendary players have been ignored by selectors and managers, without much reason why.

Can you believe, for example, that Peter Withe was our most capped England player in 50 years while at the club? Or that his inclusion in the 1982 World Cup squad was the first time ever a Villa player had been included in an England World Cup selection? John Devey, Harry Hampton, Pongo Waring, Eric Houghton, Gerry Hitchins, Brian Little, Sid Cowans...all with 10 or fewer England caps. It defies understanding.

The great irony of all this is that Aston Villa, as was much trumpeted in the launch for our 2009-10 away kit, have supplied more players to the England team than any other club in Britain. At the moment, the fluid tally stands at around 72 give or take arguments about loan players. For some reason, this pleases me despite my assumption an England call-up to a Villa player is like a midnight knock from the KGB. It pleases me because it shows we get it right at Villa Park, shaping international-standard players like a conveyor belt no other can match. But it pleases me even more when lesser players fall off that conveyor belt in a lust for glory.

But then again, given Villa’s heavy Scottish heritage, maybe as a club we’ve got an anti-England streak in our collective DNA. Because I happen to think the feeling is reciprocal, despite how lunatic that sounds. I’m sure I can be as patriotic as you like about England. Just don’t ask me to choose between club and country, as you’ll be sent away with swear-words ringing in your ears.

Chris Stanley