Will the number one shirt be England’s achilles heel?

As we go into a World Cup qualifying weekend it is nice and unusual for an England fan to be relaxed. Having already qualified for next summer’s jamboree in South Africa we go into the games against Ukraine and Belarus with an air of smugness, watching other teams scrabbling around to fill the remaining places.

Unrealistically

Of course, as an England fan, I am always smug. I always think we have the best team and that this next tournament might just be the one that we win. In my lifetime we never have, but that doesn’t stop me and millions of other English people unrealistically thinking it.

In some ways we have a right to feel more confident at the moment than we have done for many years. We probably have our best defence for a long while, a decent midfield and if we can get the right combination and keep the right players fit, a pretty potent strike-force. It all sounds good until you get to the position of goalkeeper.

Possession

The man in possession at the moment is West Ham’s Robert Green. He is undoubtedly a good keeper. Nothing more and nothing less. Whether he is good enough to be the goalkeeper of a team that wins the world cup is another matter entirely. The twenty-nine year old is likely to add to his seven caps this week and has a chance to establish himself as England’s first choice throughout the build up to the world cup.

His challengers for the position would seem to be Ben Foster, Paul Robinson, Joe Hart and David James. In that we group we have three good keepers, nothing more and nothing less and one enigma who will be celebrating his fortieth birthday just after the world cup.

Freak

Paul Robinson held the position of England’s number one for quite a while and did a decent job. He won forty-one caps but he hit a run of bad form after conceding a freak goal in a defeat in Croatia and has never fully recovered from it. He is performing well now for Blackburn but there would not be too many confident English fans if he was to be given the gloves next summer.

Joe Hart is a promising keeper but he is in for a very hard season at Birmingham and he is still prone to the type of mistakes that inexperienced keepers make. Good though he may turn out to be, he is not a world cup winning goalkeeper. With just one international cap he would be too much of a risk.

Unfortunate

Ben Foster would have been my choice prior to the last few weeks. When I used to watch him for my beloved Watford I thought I was looking at the man who would be England’s best keeper since Gordon Banks and the next one after Banks to pick up a world cup winners medal. He has been terribly unfortunate with injuries since he returned to Old Trafford but has had a chance this season to lay down his mark. He has not managed to do that as he has produced a string of nervy and unconvincing performances. When van der Saar is fit, he will return and Foster will be consigned to a season in the reserves and no chance of adding to his two caps.

David James earned his first England cap twelve years ago. He has a total of forty-eight caps which shows that successive managers have looked elsewhere but often turned back to the Portsmouth stopper. As we all know, James is capable of true greatness but his nickname of ‘Calamity James’ is certainly a fair one. At the age of thirty-nine he is definitely not less likely to make a mistake than he has ever been. When other countries see David James’ name on the England team-sheet they must fancy their chances of scoring.

Problem

I think this is a very real problem for England in their quest to win the world cup. There is simply not a goalkeeper that can match up to Casillas’ and Bouffon’s of this world. Unless someone hits some amazing form over the next few months the goalkeeping position may well prove to be England’s Achilles heel.