This would have been relevant around 15 years ago and I would have probably agreed but since the obvious decline of Intl football and other leagues and the improvement in the Premier League, I think there's nothing controversial with saying that England have some of the best players in the world, like nothing at all.
2 things can be true by the way, like some players can be over-rated that doesn't mean they can't still be rated.
Besides all that all this kinda misses the point anyway - I'm sure the original debate was about who was favourites for the EUROS, comparing individual players is pointless, all about how you play as a team and the balance of it.
Shadydan
Mate, England have always had one or two of the best players in the world. There were occasions when It has the BEST. But as you have acknowledged nuance, in correctly pointing out that two things can be true, I will happily discuss this with you.
Not once have I denied that as a group our under age and senior men's teams have not improved. The England DNA, play through the thirds mantra increased quality. But what the folk high on the SKY supply fail to acknowledge or even see is the work isn't even nearly complete.
We still elevate physicality and being dominant in duals by nature of the way the game is played on this Island but NOT international level, to our detriment. The kid obsessed with the micro over the macro point I was actually making, would start wailing about Saka and Kane at Stones and Maddison and Foden as proof this is a stereotype whilst ignoring the point that this fetishism still has Eric Dier, Harry Maguire, Lewis Dunk, Jordan Henderson and Connor Gallagher winning Senior caps. This kind of footballer rooted in physicality and little else will need to be totally phased out of our game culture. Its far from a revolutionary idea but we are wedded to our past no matter how hard we wish to deny it.
It will take a few more cycles to get beyond this attritional belife in how you defend and how you contend midfield but it will eventually come. We have prehaps three elite players and one worldclass one. This isn't as of itself an issue as I said pages ago we are discussing ENGLAND not other teams and teams HAVE won tournaments with little more at their disposal. But those sides did not carry the ingrained habitual issues that the England's men's team does. These issues are not fixed by Semi finals (lol!!) or by coaches from within this culture who have never won Anything. Lionel Scaloni did not come from within such a culture, nor does Nagelsmann or Dechamp. Look no further for your winner.
All this before taking into account Southgate as tactician, or most detrimental , the toxic relationship between the mens national team it's 'fans' and it's position as a totem in the culture war and its odd symbolic status as a kind of societal scapegoat. It's so fucked up you could write a play about ....oh yeah right.
