Know thy enemy, know thy self

With this young England team just 24 hours away from, what is for a large number of the players, their first senior World Cup, the tension is rising. With so much focus on this exciting young England team that has broken convention and actually sparked some real ambition into the nation, we are forgetting one of the key elements of war and battle “Know thy enemy and know thy self”.

For us, our first hurdle is Italy and as the old cliché goes ‘ you can only beat what’s in front of you’ and we shouldn’t look past that. Looking to the Costa Rica game or the Uruguay game as places we could potentially earn the points to get out of this group is folly.  To be the best, we must beat the best and Italy are not the best. There are superstars in this Italy squad that strike fear into any nation and with good cause. Mario Balotelli, Andrea Pirlo and Giorgio Chiellini are world class players who we know will turn up to any big occasion and it doesn’t come bigger than the World Cup. We have experienced first hand the ability of Pirlo as we watched him dismantle England in the 2012 Euro’s and we are all familiar with Balotelli, need I say more? We know what we’re getting; he’s awesome and quite scary really. Do we however know the scale of the task we have ahead of us? or are we just residing ourselves to second best in this group? Very much like ourselves, this Italy team is littered with young, exciting talent facing their first world cup.

Players such as Torino forward and danger man Circo Immobile. At 24 years old, Immobile is playing in his first world cup for Italy after a Serie A campaign that saw him score 22 goals in 33 league appearances for Torino. A daunting prospect yes but so is Daniel Sturridge. I have no doubt that by the same token that we worry about this Italy side, the Italians worry about players like Daniel. How could they not?  A stellar campaign in the best division in world football is not something that goes unnoticed and Daniel is not the only example of this we have in this England crop. The same pride and confidence we feel seeing these young English players turn out and turn up for their respective club sides should carry with us. We should feel the same way about Jack Wilshere in an England shirt as we do an Arsenal shirt, the same with Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson, Joe Hart, Gary Cahill and of course, top of my list Wayne Rooney. These are players that we support week in week out or fear week in, week out. The colour of the jersey doesn’t change the man wearing it.

Excitement and ambition are not words usually synonymous with any England international side but this time around, things are clearly different. We should not be scared of losing, rather scared of trying, because if the players of the quality that we have do show up in Brazil, we can beat anybody. I don’t want to sound gassed or appear to be trying to ignite a fire from a spark that’s not there but we know that for the first time in a long time there is real character, talent and promise in this team. Players such as Jack Wilshere, Wayne Rooney and Ross Barkley are the best examples of the ‘new generation’ of English football. For decades England have been tarnished with the brush of tough tackling and no-nonsense football but this just isn’t the case anymore. Skill, control and creativity are the buzz words for this young team. In our typical English football ignorance, we assume that the world still sees us how we see ourselves, dark horses at best. It’s humility yes but maybe it’s time we stopped being humble and got arrogant? We are the stars of the Premier League and the Premier League rules doesn’t it?