Is England's Squad Deep Enough to Win the World Cup?
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Hello and welcome back to your latest edition of It's All Kicking Off. We have another international break. It's a strange thing, the football season. The first half of it seems to exist of or contain or comprise nothing but international breaks. Then you have a huge gap through the winter season.

Forget all about the national team. And then they come galloping back over the horizon. That is now essentially England versus Albania this Friday at Wembley, Latvia. The visitors are...

on Monday. Everybody can have a big pause for breath after the Cowboy Cup final. I think they're still celebrating in Newcastle. I think Craig Hope is still trying to get his breath back. And Chris Sutton is still absent. I'm not quite sure where he is. I've been telling him for weeks that he needs a break.

And he's decided to take one. Wasn't here on Monday and he's not here today. But that doesn't matter because we have Jack Gorn, our Manchester City correspondent and one of our England reporters. So, Jack, welcome and pertinent to have you. I want to get straight in to the week. You were at St George's Park.

on Tuesday for the first day, well, the first public day of the Thomas Tuchel reign as England coach. What were your first impressions? My first impressions were that they've got some fun, silly little warm-ups that they're doing now where they're keeping the ball up while holding each other's hands. I read about that. And going from one end of the pitch to the other. So that's the brave new thing.

I suppose. The Times wrote a whole article about that. Yeah, well, I mean, it was quite funny to watch. I mean, it sort of does speak to something that he's trying to do in that you hear stories of like the best teams have always got the best camaraderie, haven't they? And clearly Tuchel has looked at the England squad and

having spoken to loads and loads of people over the last couple of months and thought that is an area where they need to improve. And we were both there for the press conference last week, weren't we, on Friday. And it felt like that was the sort of message that it was all about a brotherhood and teamwork rather than anything sort of tactical, which I thought it continued earlier this week at St George's Park.

which I thought was quite interesting. He seems to be quite forthright about that and he's clearly gone in with a bit of a game plan that this is going to be something he's going to attack. Yeah, I mean, it was something that Gareth Southgate was hot on, as we know, the feeling of unity in that squad, the feeling of belonging, the feeling of pride, which I think we can probably all agree had

a little bit from the national scene, not blaming previous managers such as Roy Hodgson and Capello and Sven and people like that. But it was definitely something that Gareth decided that he needed to improve. And it appears that Thomas feels the same. Just take you back to what you were saying about the warmups and the training games. Just off of the list, there's a little bit of behind the curtain stuff. When you go to an England practice,

a press day or press conference, just as you do when you might go to a Champions League press conference the day before a big Champions League game, you are allowed to watch a little bit of the training. But of course, the only bit of the training that you're allowed to watch before you get kicked out is the nonsense stuff. It's like the keep-ups.

and the silly little games holding hands and the crossbar challenge and playing tick and things like that. Watching those sessions would make you think that anybody could be a professional footballer. And then of course we are turfed out and the proper serious stuff begins. So,

Jack, you are close to Lee Carsley, um, who has gone back to his role as England under 21, uh, manager. You covered Carsley's 21s when they won the European championships a couple of summers ago. Um, you, um, have written a, um, a really interesting exclusive interview with Carsley, which is running on the Mail, Mail Sport platforms at the moment. Um,

There's a big leap, isn't there, from Carsley to Thomas Tuchel. Carsley was part of the pathway, a coach for the future, a coach with an eye on the future. Tuchel is none of those things. Tuchel is a coach for the short term, 18-month contract, one objective to win the World Cup in the summer of 2026. Does that offend you, disappoint you, or should it be about the long term or just about winning?

I think it's just got to be about winning, hasn't it, really? I don't really see any point in the long-term thing if you're in a country that develops so many good players. Because England have got amazing players at all times, so therefore there's no point in always looking two tournaments ahead. I can see why they've gone for two, because they've done exceptionally well over the last...

eight years in major tournaments but haven't got over the line and they just basically just pick someone to get them over the line and then the hope is that once he does it

He sort of broke the dam and then there's other guys that can come through after him, maybe Carlsley will be one of them. I do think it's sort of understandable what they've done. Well, if he does it, if he were to do it and break the dam, I'd imagine he'd be given another contract. Would he want one though? Well, yeah, let's see. Interesting what you said there, England have amazing players. I don't know if we have amazing players.

You know, I think we have some amazing players. Sadly, a lot of them are in the same position or similar positions. So I don't know if we have amazing centre-halves. I think they have more. I don't know if we've got amazing full-backs these days. You know, so, and that is, I mean, if we did, for example, have amazing central defenders and full-backs, would Dan Byrne be in the squad? Dan Byrne's a great story and seems to be a great lad.

But does his selection point at just that, the romanticism of sport and the way that players can come through late to get an international call-up? Or does it point to a lack of depth in key positions? And again, you were at St. George's Park yesterday when Byrne was speaking.

Yeah, and it was amazing. It was great to hear from Burton. You're right, it's a brilliant story. People are blithe. It's cracking for them. And amazing for him because he's a sort of story that the FA love in that he's played in up and down the Pyramids, come through, made himself a mainstay in the Premier League, etc., etc.,

What I would say with his selection is that there's no Maguire, no Stones, and then at left-back there's no Hall and there's no Shaw. So is there a lack of depth? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, how far down the pecking order and how many injuries do you need to have before it becomes a lack of depth? I don't know. The problem is, Jack, is that moving forward...

there will be no McGuire and no stones on a more regular basis because those two are starting to, well, stone started quite a while ago to become injury prone, if that's fair. Um,

Luke Shaw is, well, is injury prone personified. Lewis Hall is slightly different. So we are moving into the post-Maguire, post-Stones era, whether we like it or not, much as we would like, particularly someone like John Stones to be fit for the next 18 months. I've got no idea whether he will be. So I don't know. You look at Mark Gay, you look at Consta,

uh, Gerald, Gerald Quantz is also, also in the squad. Dan Byrne, you know, I don't know if that is, I don't know if that is a type of depth that wins you a World Cup because that is what we are talking about. We are not talking about a squad, a team to get us to the quarterfinals or even a semifinal. We're trying to win the World Cup and I just don't know whether, um,

whether that depth is quite there. Kyle Walker's in the squad again. We know what happened to Kyle in the first half of this season at Manchester City. Trent Alexander-Arnold is injured, of course. Look, I'm pleased for Byrne. Chris Sutton advocated his call up last season on this podcast and I laughed him out.

out of town and continued to laugh him out of town for the rest of the season and continued to remind him about it um and now he's in the squad you listened to him yesterday um what did he have to say was he sober um first of all given that well he was very much given what happened to the weekend he made a point of saying that when the the buses got back to the got back to the grove at

at midnight on Sunday that he went straight to bed. The Newcastle buses. Yeah, and he...

He had a big day on Monday, largely because he had to apologise to Jared Bowen for smashing into him in a game recently, which I thought was quite funny. He was good for stories, Burn. Yes, good talker. I don't know whether he thought about it before and what he wanted to say or whether it was all sort of off the cuff, but every single answer had something in it. He got asked about...

Alan Shearer told him to retire after he scored on Sunday and he's like, well, no, I've got England duty and all this sort of stuff. There was a tale to every answer, which was really nice and really refreshing. I understand what you're saying about laughing at Chris for suggesting that he deserves a call-up. There was quite a lot of people...

Quite recently said that Newcastle need to move on from Tambourne, given the way the club is going and the finances and things like that. And there are certain people and players that have got a lot of staying power. I think of someone like James Milner, sort of remoulded himself after he became a right-back and things like that. The players of an age who want to carry on,

make themselves sort of indispensable in their own way. And it seems that Byrne has done that, which has then allowed himself, you know, or allowed him to flourish. And, you know, this week's been the pinnacle of his career. Yeah, there's definitely such a thing as a player who refuses to go away. And Byrne probably falls into that category and it's hard to feel anything but absolute delight for him.

I thought it was slightly nicer in the way I put it than you. I'm just, well, you know me, Jack. Jack, you've known me long enough. It takes a lot to get gushing enthusiasm and praise out of me, but I should underline that I am very pleased for Dan Byrne, whatever it says for strength and depth in that department.

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Now, a little bit of domestic stuff, Jack, before we kind of wrap up. Ticket prices, thorny issue, thorny issue for anybody who goes to watch football these days, certainly in the Premier League. In the news this week, because of what Manchester United have done, we knew it was coming because it had been well flagged.

Their ticket prices are up 5%, which some people have taken, some United fans have thought it could have been worse. But I think what is more interesting is that, as we knew, senior citizen concessions have now been cut, for example. I've had an email today from an OAP who has supported my United since 1957, ceasing to get a hold of them for 19 years.

And his ticket has gone up by 56%. He's written to the club. He's written to the club calling it disgusting, immoral and downright criminal. Jack, where are we now in terms of football clubs, Premier League football clubs and its audience, the audience that it's got in terms of its match day clientele and the audience that it wants?

I don't think we know the audience that it wants. I don't really know where it's heading. I think I know the audience. I mean, the obvious answer is on the audience that it wants is that no season ticket holders whatsoever and people coming on and match day prices that are playing higher markup and maybe they're doing two or three games a season and they're doing on a little, you know, they're having a jolly day with the family and whatever and that's fine.

And that is probably utopia to chief execs up and down the country, particularly the American chief execs. But it's not realistic for them to want that. So what they want it to look like, realistically, I don't really know. What it does look like at the moment is you just have diminishing atmospheres. I mean, you and I go to enough grounds up and down the country where

The atmosphere is just nowhere near what it was 10 years ago. Do you think so? Particularly in the top six stadiums. I'm not sure about that. Maybe you just go to better games than I do then. More important ones. Well, I mean, look, I don't know. I think if you go to the big clubs, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle, United, City,

The team plays well. The atmosphere is good. The atmosphere is good, I think. City sports probably got a bit spoiled, a little bit entitled. United fans have become anxious, but they still blow the house down when the team's blood gets up. But that's your experience. That's my experience. I mean, it's interesting that you say that.

I think that clubs, I mean, look, the club you cover specifically, Manchester City, as we know, were the first club to introduce executive seating behind the dugouts, for example. The Tunnel Club, as they call it at Manchester City, moving season ticket holders to make way for people paying through the nose to eat, drink, and then enjoy the best seats in the house. Chelsea followed suit absolutely.

Tottenham have done the same and now Manchester United are moving people from behind their dugout we won't make the joke about you know premium seats being the ones facing away from the pitch at Old Trafford because that would just that would just be mean and obvious but this is what the clubs are doing and I think you know I think

I don't agree with people like Ollie Holt, our chief sports writer at Mail Sport, who is adamant that local fans are being driven out the game deliberately and on purpose and that they must be kind of treasured as much as fans who visit from overseas. Yeah.

that's a really difficult argument to perpetuate because so much money for the Premier League comes from overseas now, Jack, in terms of overseas. The overseas TV deal is more lucrative than the domestic TV deal now. Half of our clubs are owned by Americans and most of our coaches are foreign. Most of our players are foreign. We are an international football league that just happens to take place in England. So when you look at it like that, it's hard to deny that,

visitors from America, Asia, other parts of Europe, their places in our football stadiums because they're funding it in one way or another. Yeah, I mean, it's a very difficult conversation to have because if you are a fan of Man United, Man City, Liverpool or whatever and you happen to be from a different part of the world,

Like, you shouldn't be stopped from going to watch that team. But I don't think anyone's suggesting that you should. I think the idea that the local fans are getting priced out, they stem from what you were talking about with the United season ticket prices before. And not so much the concessions, but the 5% and people being, like, fairly blasé about the 5% and going, well, it could have been worse, fine. But what we've seen...

In a number of clubs over the years, and City included in this, there are increases by stealth. So your ticket might go up 2% one year, and you go, oh, well, that's okay, that's fine. And the next year it'll go up by 10%, and you'll be fairly outraged by it. And the next year it'll be 1%, and you'll be okay. And then it'll still go on and on and on. And then in five, six years' time, you suddenly find that it's gone up 25% without you really realising it.

And you've not had a steady period of time where you've been sort of really disgruntled about it. And it's just been done under your nose. And I think that's what they're all doing. And that's why they're getting priced out. I don't think that there's any argument for, for,

scrapping OAP concessions. I mean, just essentially driving long-serving, long-standing supporters away from your football stadium. There absolutely can't be no justification for that at all. Equally, I'm not one of those people, and there are many out there who get offended when they see what you might call tourist football fans in Premier League stadiums. You do see it on social media.

Oh, look at them. Yeah, the phone camera brigade, the ones who are taking photographs when the opposition score a goal with their mobile phones. You know, I'm sorry. Like I say, you know, it's the interest from overseas that is driving this Premier League as much as the interest and the economic input from people who we see as our traditional fan base. It's just the way it's changed.

I just think that in stadiums as big as the ones that we have, there has to be a way of finding room for both. Let me ask you a question, Jack. You support Blackpool, right? Have done, obviously, since you were a kid.

And I should know, and I don't, what are prices like further down the pyramid at clubs like Blackpool and when you go to away games? Yeah, well, I only exclusively go to away games these days. I paid £32 to watch as a Wigan Athletic last year. That feels like a lot. Does it feel like a lot when you pay it? £32 for League One football. I'm not very good League One football. No. But was that an outlier?

Or is that typical? Yeah, it would normally, yeah, probably normally looking at 20 to 25. I think Stockport away the other week was 25, 26. Stockport have made a real effort for some games to encourage the local community and, you know, in the shadow of clubs like City and United. It depends how you look at it. I mean, I look at,

you know, a good 25 quid feels a lot, feels a lot, but then equally, you know, you could go down to your local and spend 25 quid in an hour very easily, couldn't you? Buying a round for mates. Very, very, very, very quickly. Well, if you're as generous as you are, then yeah. If you do it as infrequently as I do, you've really saved, really saved up for it. You know, so you could, you know,

I suppose, at least if you go and have an hour with your mates, chances are you'll enjoy yourself. If you go and watch Blackpool away at Wigan, you really don't know whether you are or not. And before I let you go, Jack, I just want to pick your brain a tiny bit on City. Obviously, it's the club that you've covered for male sport for seven, eight, nine years now, I think. Time flies by. Where are we with City? Where are we with

with Pep. Is there any feeling that, blimey, as mad as it sounds, if they did finish outside the top five and didn't qualify for Champions League, any feeling, any whispers that he could kind of walk almost out of a sense of embarrassment? Yeah, it's always the answer to that is always the worse it gets, the more likely they'll stay.

Oh, okay. Because you'll feel compelled to fix it. Yeah, that's always the message that comes back. I think they're just treading water, really, for next season. They're just going to try and finish in the top five. A few weeks ago, if you'd asked me about the top five, I'd said, absolutely nailed on, no problem. And then, you know, they lost at Forest. They were okay. They weren't great. Yeah.

And then there was the Brighton game as well, the draw. So they sort of dropped five points in two weeks and suddenly it's become quite congested again. It looks like they've got quite a favourable running, but they've got a few teams in and around this play. I would still say they will do it, but I'm nowhere near as certain as I was more recently. And then in the summer, it's going to be a case of

Probably three or four out and four or five in, I would have thought. If that happens, and you did call it in January, you said in about December, you wrote that City would sign three or four players. Some people tried to...

that that wasn't the case, but it did turn out to be the case. Well, there's time five to be fair, Lado, so. Yeah, I can't count. If you do that, if they do that again this summer, that's a whole new team in the space of two windows. I mean, who would have thought that that could happen and that people like

De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva and Gundogan would and obviously Kyle Walker and Stones question mark would all drop off the face of a cliff in the same half a season absolutely extraordinary I'm not sure if I can remember anything like it from a top team the

Yeah, I mean, Foden's in there as well. Yeah, but I can only presume that Phil will recover his form. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't mention Grealish, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I'm not convinced that the other ones will. In fact, I don't think they will. Yeah, all the players that you mentioned there, they've been question marked over them

all of them over the last two years. But as you say, not all at the same time. So you say four or five players in the summer. I don't want to nail you down to it, but you did say it. Any idea which positions? Well, there was talk that they were going to go, they might go for goalkeeper in January. Yeah, goalkeeper, yeah. So I would think that, yeah, I would think a goalkeeper comes in. Probably need another midfielder, fullback.

So, this can be Asso at Juventus they were looking at. So, yeah, it's going to be another... It sort of depends on who wants to leave and how much money they can get for certain players. Yeah, how easy it is to get them out. So, that's the issue. And then, obviously, De Bruyne's contract's coming to an end. Gundogan is going to trigger an extension on his contract. But then, does Gundogan and the club, do they turn around and say...

maybe it's time but I mean yeah it'd be fascinating and all of that is talking without discussing the Club World Cup and the impact of that and the way that you know

Pep's already told you a lot that they're going there for a jolly Chris and I talked about it on the podcast a couple of weeks ago yeah he's taken his golf clubs and the families are coming so yeah I think he I think he sort of wanted to get out of that press conference relatively quickly so said whatever he could to then vacate um I

Yeah, I mean, that goes obviously over the sort of threshold of July and the transfer window. So, you know, there's

De Bruyne sign a two-week extension until the end of the Club World Cup. There's loads of things. Really good point, yeah. Really good point. Really good point. Blimey, it's, I don't know, it'd be intriguing, it'd be fascinating. I mean, how on earth they shift Jack Grealish, I do not know. I mean, blimey, how do they do that on wages and all the rest of it? But there we go. Jack, you are the person to follow. As I just said, you get much more right than most people when it comes to Manchester City. So make sure you give Jack...

follow on x and of course make sure you're following male sport on x and our other social accounts um instagram uh tiktok and of course youtube you can find excerpts from this show on all of those places and you can also leave your observations um just one quick one here before we wrap up

Kyle on X was not overly impressed by Craig Hope's suggestion on Monday's pod that Newcastle may well be persuaded to let Alexander Izak go this summer. Kyle says, I'm convinced.

Isaac or Isaac will be at Newcastle next year. Look at the way he always talks about the club and says, this is just the beginning. That's not the talk of a guy who wants to leave. Craig, I think you're a cracking journalist, but Isaac is going nowhere. That's Kyle saying that, not me. Let us know what you think about what we've talked about today. The England, England, uh,

the Thomas Tuchel era is upon us Albania and Latvia Premier League football can he win the World Cup playing that way can he win the World Cup with Harry Kane in the team can he win the World Cup with Dan Byrne in the team are England right are the FA right to be looking short term and

in terms of their planning or should they be looking at pathways and developing players? Let us know on all of that and more. And what's your experience of tickets? How much are you paying to watch your team home and away? Is it value for money? Is it value for money in the Premier League? Is it value for money outside of the Premier League? Let us know what you think about that. You can do that at Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever it is that you listen to this show. While you're there, hit the follow button.

leave us a rating and of course a review Jack thanks for being with us mate I've enjoyed it I will see you at Wembley on Friday all being well everybody else we'll be back on Monday hopefully Chris Sutton will have come out from under his rock by then and we'll see you at the start of next week

If you like this episode, we think you'll love this.

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