There was a hardly a FIFA or UEFA competition in which England was not considered to be among favorites for the win and yet, the Albion never managed to fulfill those lofty predictions. There was always some sort of problem which proved to be decisive. The last chance was at EURO 2020, which basically was a home tournament for the English, but the football didn’t return home after all, since Bukayo Saka missed the penalty against Italy in the finals. But what about other generations?🧤 Most clean sheets in Premier League history:1️⃣ Petr Cech – 2022️⃣ David James – 1693️⃣ Mark Schwarzer – 1514️⃣ David Seaman, 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐝𝐞 𝐆𝐞𝐚 – 1405️⃣ Nigel Martyn – 137 pic.twitter.com/DtyQYPORAZ— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) February 20, 2023 Maybe former goalkeeper David James can help us solve the mystery. Former Liverpool and Manchester city goalie made a total of 53 appearances for England during his career, and was part of England squads for three different World Cups. James recently spoke to his former boss in Portsmouth Harry Redknapp’s podcast, and revealed the atmosphere in the Albion’s training camp in the 90’s. He also admitted to smoking about 20 cigarettes a day.”Things change. We used to meet up in the England squad back in the early 90s and the first thing you’d do is meet the whole staff in the bar down at Burnham Beeches. It was like… well done this weekend guys. We will be training tomorrow at some point. And you’d be in the bar until two or three o’clock in the morning. And that was just standard. You can’t imagine now. I can’t imagine Gareth Southgate saying ‘come on lads meet you in the bar. The squad then… Paul Gascoigne was part of that squad. Wrighty (Ian Wright) was part of that squad. We used to have The Queen Vic, which was (Paul) Ince’s room. We’d go in The Queen Vic each night – drink beers – play computer games and smoke fags. Not everyone – but whoever wanted a drink could have a drink and whoever wanted a smoke. It was a communal space. Really, really good” recalled James.Lampard and Ferdinand used to party every nightThere were other reasons too. Rio Ferdinand was the part of that strong group in 2006, led by Sven-Goran Eriksson and names such Neville, Cole, Gerrard, Ferdinand, Terry, Beckham, Lampard, Rooney, Owen, Joe Cole, and Carragher were enough for at least one trophy, but competitiveness of the Premier League ruined everything.“It overshadowed things. It killed that England team, that generation. One year we would have been fighting Liverpool to win the league, another year it would be Chelsea. So I was never going to walk into the dressing room and open up to Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, John Terry or Joe Cole at Chelsea, or Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher at Liverpool. I wouldn’t open up because of the fear they would take something back to their clubs and use it against us, to make them better than us. I didn’t really want to engage with them” explained Rio Ferdinand in 2018.##NAJAVA_MECA_7131898##
