If you're good enough, you're old enough.

Is Thomas Tuchel's first England squad too old? Why not try the young and fearless? Paul Simpson explains

“When you’re old enough to drive a car, you should be old enough to play football games.” That has been Jurgen Klopp’s consistent coaching credo but England managers have often thought differently. Only two players in Thomas Tuchel’s first squad for the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign are 21 or under: Arsenal’s versatile 18-year-old left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly and Real Madrid’s attacking midfielder Jude Bellingham who is the most recent of six 17-year-olds to star for England, making his debut in November 2020 in a 3-0 win against Ireland.

Tuchel’s selection prompted former midfielder and manager Joey Barton, on trial over offensive social media posts against Jeremy Vine and female football pundits, to tweet: “No Gibbs-White or Elliot Anderson? No Nwaneri? No Branthwaite? 4 goalies? And Jordan Henderson? Henderson and (Kyle) Walker, have been great servants but, let’s be honest, their best days are way behind them.” (Morgan Gibbs-White has since stepped in for the injured Cole Palmer.) Four outfield players in Tuchel’s 26-man squad are over 30: Jordan Henderson and Kyle Walker (both 34), Dan Burn (32) and Harry Kane (31).

Even so, the average age of Tuchel’s squad – 26.2 years – is not untypical for England. Terry Venables’ Euro 96 selection (with an average of 25.6) was slightly younger while Fabio Capello’s 2010 World Cup squad, with an average age of 28.5 years, was much older, a monumental miscalculation given the heat in South Africa. The average squad age for England’s major rivals at the 2026 World Cup are 26.1 years for France, 25.9 for Brazil, 25.7 for Spain and 25.5 for Italy.

The issue as to whether footballers who are good enough really are old enough to represent their country is hardly clear cut. Those in favour point to Martin Ødegaard, Pele, Diego Maradona, the youngest players to win a cap for Norway, Brazil and Argentina respectively. On the other hand, does anyone who isn’t an anorak (no disrespect intended – I count myself as one) remember Tajudeen Oyekanmi, Jose Gralha and Horacio Perlta who achieved the same distinction for Nigeria, Portugal and Uruguay?

"I want us to play with excitement and the hunger and desire to win...and the acceptance of failure is part of it, especially in football."

That said, there is something deeply stirring about watching a young England player become a hero. Think of 18-year-old Michael Owen’s slalom goal against Argentina in the last 16 at France 98; 19-year-old Theo Walcott’s hat-trick in a World Cup qualifier against Croatia in September 2008 or 18-year-old Wayne Rooney on the rampage against France, Croatia and Switzerland at Euro 2004.

There is a legitimate counter-argument, made by Football Further’s Tom Williams in The Guardian back in 2013, that rushing young players into the England first-team does more harm than good: “England's eagerness to promote teenage players to the highest level could be explained by the uniquely physical emphasis of the English game. Amid such focus on pace and power, speedsters such as Owen and Walcott or powerhouses such as Rooney can dominate youth-level matches in a more demonstrable manner than the way an equally gifted but less physically imposing player might influence a game in a different country. The obvious pitfall is that it loads unrealistic expectations upon players whose advanced development in relation to their peers owes so much to their physical precocity.”

While It is true, as Williams says, that Rooney, Owen and Walcott were physically precocious, and later burdened by being hyped as the future of English football, their careers were also undermined by something much more mundane: injuries. Equally, while France and Spain’s structured pathway through different youth levels has developed a phenomenal amount of talent, it has been tempered by pragmatism. France’s all-time top scorer Olivier Giroud never represented his country at youth level. Kylian Mbappe was promoted straight to the senior team from the Under-19s, as was winger Lamine Yamal, the youngest ever Spanish international – he was 16 years and 57 days old when he made his debut – who set up the first goal in the Roja’s 2-1 victory against England in the Euro 2024 final. Sheffield Wednesday’s defensive midfielder Nathaniel Chalobah shows how random player development can be: playing for England’s Under-16s when he was 13, he won 97 caps at youth level but has played just six minutes and 54 seconds for the senior side.

Choosing an England squad is not, as Gareth Southgate noted, a popularity contest but many fans would love to see 21-year-old Crystal Palace midfielder Adam Wharton, Everton defender Jarrad Branthwaite and Ipswich striker Liam Delap (who are both 22) promoted from the Under-21s. In a possible nod to the future, Tuchel did invite Delap, Wharton and Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Southampton’s 23-year-old centre-back, to train with the senior squad.

One of our fundamental biases is to overestimate how closely the future will resemble the present and, as fans, journalists and pundits we tend to read far too much into every England line-up ignoring the many contingencies (injuries, the opposition, tactics, football politics, the importance of the match) that influence each selection. Only two players, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton, who appeared in Sir Alf Ramsey’s debut as England manager – a 5-2 trouncing by France in February 1963 – were on the pitch when the Three Lions won the World Cup at Wembley in 1966.

Arguably the greatest known unknown is how individual England managers perceive their emerging stars. In 1979, 22-year-old Glen Hoddle scored a spectacular goal on his senior debut, a 2-0 win against Bulgaria, and was promptly dropped; boss Ron Greenwood remarking gnomically: “Disappointment maketh the man.” Mind you, Hoddle could be equally meretricious as England manager, omitting Andy Cole from his France 98 squad on the dubious grounds that “he needs six chances to score one goal.” (Given that he initially left Owen on the bench because he was “not a natural goalscorer”, you wonder if ‘The Hod’ ever watched a striker he was impressed by.)

One intensely emotive – and utterly unprovable – argument to select young players for England is that they are fresh and fearless. It sounds like a cliche but there may be something in it. We have become accustomed to watching experienced England teams struggle, possibly because, one psychologist argues, they are driven by ‘loss aversion’, a known psychological phenomena which means, research suggests, that we find the prospect of losing £10 2.5 times as painful as the pleasure from gaining £10. This mentality may account for England’s dismal 0-0 draw with Algeria in 2010 – the only highlights being Emile Heskey’s stepovers – and the 1-1 bore draw against Denmark at Euro 2024.

The inspiring contrast to such timidity is epitomised by Michael Owen at France 98 when he scored a goal so brilliant in the last 16 that even the Argentinian press applauded. (Maradona hailed him as “the only good thing to come out of the World Cup: speed, cunning and balls”.) Even in England’s 2-1 defeat to Romania, he scored and, chasing an equaliser, hit the post from 25 yards. He wasn’t renowned for his long shots but, with a mere 25 minutes of World Cup experience, he said later: “I felt I could beat the world”. That kind of confidence can win tournaments but Tuchel has only eight or ten qualifying matches to discover – and/or nurture – such a player.