Kobbie Mainoo, Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden are England’s reasons to believe. But here’s why Gareth Southgate is worried about the future, writes IAN LADYMAN

During those long days of Covid lockdown four years ago, I sat in my office window watching a teenage boy dribble a football in and out of cones in the family’s driveway across the road. He would also do shuttle runs.

His father sometimes watched, but the boy clearly knew what he was doing. It turned out that he was at Manchester United’s academy and following a detailed program set by his club.

I spoke to United academy chief Nick Cox about it at the time and he explained that his staff were determined to ensure their players were as busy and focused as possible during the confusing and terrifying weeks away from the club come.

More important, however, were the regular calls made to boys and their parents to check on their mental and economic well-being. At one point there was a Zoom call from first team manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

“We care about their football progress,” Cox explained to me at the time. “But first and foremost, we need to make sure they’re okay.”

I thought about this on the way home from Wembley on Tuesday evening, as young Kobbie Mainoo would have been 14 when the lockdown started. He was in United’s system at the time. Just another hopeful boy. Perhaps he also led footballs through cones outside the family home in Stockport. Maybe he picked up the phone one day and heard his academy coach on the line just asking if he was okay.

And this isn’t just a Manchester United thing. It’s an academy thing. It’s a modern English football thing. That’s the way it is now and that’s why when we see Mainoo play the ball cleanly and progressively through the England midfield in the rain against Belgium, we should all feel lifted up for all kinds of different reasons. This is the future of the game and of our young footballers, and it looks and feels healthy.

In that England team we also looked at Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden on Tuesday. And James Maddison and others. Before the match, Bellingham and Foden presented their jackets to their mascots as the rain began to fall during the anthems. The TV cameras picked it up, but it wasn’t done for show. Maddison then took a break in the interview room before speaking to the media as he wanted to watch the Wales penalty shootout on someone’s iPad. When he was subsequently told things had gone badly, his first thoughts were of Spurs teammates Ben Davies and Brennan Johnson.

Our main concern is what these guys do for us on the field. We want them to win. We have waited a long time and once again we feel that England have a chance at the European Championships this summer. We don’t expect these young men to live perfect lives. It’s unrealistic. There will be spots. But they have been placed on the right path.

That’s what matters most and as the Premier League continues to grow and develop as a domestic competition of unparalleled quality and drama, it’s impossible not to be encouraged by the fact that our own young players remain at the heart of it.

England manager Gareth Southgate, who has named Archie Gray at Leeds as someone to watch, worries that one day there may not be enough of them. He points out that the number of homegrown players at top clubs has never been so low. We need to worry about this and listen to him.

The influence of certain favored agents at some of our clubs is a concern. Are all players being bought for the right reasons? No. Are too many coming from all over the world that are not necessarily better than what we can produce ourselves? Yes. Can the search for a ‘quick fix’ by managers and sporting directors hinder sound judgement? Doubtless.

Yet it is impossible to watch young Northern Irishman Conor Bradley rip the Scottish defense out of possession and then hammer the ball into the top corner at Hampden on Tuesday and not see the credo of his Liverpool football education cutting through his every thought and action runs. .

Some players are born to play at the highest level, while others need nurturing. For example, Foden had to wait for his body to catch up with his brain. That wasn’t a problem for Bellingham and clearly not for the wonderful Mainoo. Maddison, meanwhile, needed some emotional maturity. So does Jack Grealish.

Our academies, into which so much time, money and attention has been invested, are now programmed to tick these boxes. Who knows what lockdown was like for Mainoo at United or Bradley, then 16, at Liverpool? Their clubs knew it though, and that was probably the most important thing.

England might not be able to win the European Championship. It’s always worth remembering that there are other talented teams available. But underneath the money and self-interest of our domestic game, good things have happened. We should be grateful for it.

The UEFA system was flawed

Estonia finished bottom of qualifying group F for the European Championship. They lost seven games and drew one. They scored two goals.

Still, Estonia was given a play-off spot for this summer’s final in Germany. Fortunately, and not surprisingly, they lost the match 5-1 to Poland. But that’s not the point.

Estonia were given a chance at glory because of their performances in the Nations League, which, if anyone needed reminding, is a completely different competition. But that’s the way UEFA chooses to do it.

It was Estonia’s ability to beat San Marino (world ranking 201) and Malta (172) in a Nations League group that also featured Cyprus (125) that saw them enter the European Championship play-offs.

So this tells us that European Championship qualifying groups are not qualifying groups at all. The top two move on, but what happens below them literally doesn’t matter.

Sweden and Azerbaijan, for example, finished comfortably ahead of Estonia in that group, but did not get a play-off spot and never would. In Group A there was a similar injustice as fourth-placed Georgia finished three points behind Norway in third place but were given a play-off place ahead of them. Georgia then defeated Luxembourg and will play in the final.

In the Luxembourg group, three teams reached the play-offs, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, which finished fifth. The only country from that group that did not do this was Lichenstein, which lost all ten of its matches and scored one goal.

It would be ridiculous to give the worst team in qualifying a play-off spot, wouldn’t it? Well, Estonia were only a point and a goal better and they got one. So it will undoubtedly happen one day. Under the supervision of UEFA, nothing is ever off the table, no matter how stupid.

A future role for Southgate

Martin O’Neill is the favorite to become the new president of the League Manager’s Association, but there are hopes within the organization that Gareth Southgate will one day consider the role.

Xhaka just laughs

Whenever a team proves something, achieves something, or wins something, there are always people who have played their part in the journey and then fall by the wayside.

For example, at Arsenal, goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale was integral to last season’s progress but is no longer playing. Kieran Tierney, meanwhile, was captain and leader when times were tough in Mikel Arteta’s early days and is now on loan to Real Sociedad.

And then there is the story of Granit Xhaka. The Swiss midfielder rang the bell at Arsenal. Captain then no captain. Liked it, then disliked it, then loved it, then left it. And now he is in Germany where he is at the top of the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen.

Xabi Alonso’s team is still undefeated in the league and is ten points ahead of Bayern Munich. They have played 26 matches and Xhaka is one of only two players to have started every match. Only a cold heart would not be happy for him.