Tottenham's Young Quartet Shine For England

International breakdown…

How do we fix the England national side? The simple answer appears to be to construct a team around anyone who’s been recently managed by Mauricio Pochettino. Then, just put your feet up, dream of Saint-Denis and they’ll do the rest. Oh and Jamie Vardy. You need Jamie Vardy.

If only we’d known.

It’s no surprise that the most harmonious team performance in recent memory was coordinated by members of this season’s stand-out sides in English football. Tottenham and Leicester. Hodgson has managed to extract the life-force out of the trailblazers in this year’s title race and harnessed it for the greater good.

In Berlin, England looked…decent.

It no doubt helped the national cause that both Spurs and Leicester’s strengths lie in their powers as a collective. Although sides blessed with flashes of individual brilliance— Kane, Mahrez, Alli and Vardy will surely dominate both categories of the PFA awards— it’s the team that’s prevailed. And it was very much the team shining as one functioning organism on Saturday night.

While the ploy of Chucking in All The Spurs Lads is possibly too straightforward an explanation for England’s upturn in fortunes, the sight of Dele Alli and the gang translating their club form against the World Champions, tearing around with all the confidence and energy of, well, a fully-drilled German side, can’t help but have ignited the interest of England fans watching ringside or at home.

Watching England, for the first time in years, was fun.

Kyle Walker joined in on the act at Wembley on Tuesday with a mostly positive performance against the Netherlands. In an attacking sense he was all business; able to replicate his Spurs form to the extent that his assist for Jamie Vardy could’ve been lifted straight out of the showreel of his domestic season.

Shades of vintage Walker crept in on occasion, however, as his penchant for bombing forward sometimes caught him out of position. Luckily his bullet-quick recovery pace kept him out of any serious danger.

A quartet became a quintet, then, of Spurs players asking serious questions of Roy Hodgson and his final twenty-three. It would be a fine reflection of how these young players have progressed under Pochettino, if all five were to make it to France.