I don't see much evidence that "a good team" can be formed from that squad. England's performances have been weak for a long time now and there's nothing new here to change that. All I wanted to see from this tournament is some promise for the future with some break-through performances. No chance of that happening with this mostly aging or not-good-enough group of players. Love to be proven wrong, but let's face it, Hodgson is already being set up as the next Graham Taylor/Steve McClaren by the media, and this squad won't help. I do wonder now if there is some truth in the "FA puppet" tag now - I expected Hodgson to be a bit more imaginative than this.
Simon - with all due respect - our lot do not look anywhere near as good invidually as that German squad The German team for THAT game 01 Neuer 03 Friedrich 16 Lahm Captain 17 Mertesacker 20 Boateng 06 Khedira 07 Schweinsteiger 08 Ozil 10 Podolski 11 Klose 13 Muller Now look at our team for the same game ... 01 James 02 G Johnson 03 A Cole 06 Terry 15 Upson 04 Gerrard Captain 08 Lampard 14 Barry 16 Milner 10 Rooney 19 Defoe Coceivably Roy could swap Hart for Green and Cahill for Upson and that is how far we will have come ..... the Germans can bring in Gomez who has been on fire this season ...... no wonder I find the whole prospect of the competition depressing.
But look beneath the surface, if we get past the group stages we could conceivably have Rooney, Young and Welbeck all playing in attack, 3 good young players who are used to playing together. Terry and Cahill would be carrying on a CB partnership from club football. Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain are both exciting young attackers used to combining. People talk about changing over to the young players, then when they get picked they complain about the quality of individuals in the squad.