Think it highlights a weakness in the players themselves too though.
They get this coaching at their clubs and play in this way but then go into the international side and are unable to carry any of it across with them, it's like they're all robots that do exactly as they're told without having the capacity to think for themselves. You'd think after spending time under these coaches at club level that they'd start to engage their brains a little more, not be so reliant on what they're being told and be able to think for themselves, so even with a dullard like Southgate lining them up there'd still be enough individual though out on the pitch to create some decent football. It just doesn't seem to happen though, they just do as they're told.
I was reading something the other day about de Bruyne, was from an interview with another Belgian footballer who'd played with him years ago I think, he said how even as a young kid playing at Genk that KdB would frequently get into arguments with more senior players or coaches because he had his own ideas and if he was asked to do something differently that he thought was wrong then he'd challenge it. Whilst you don't want to see some Redknapp style shit where the manager contributes nothing and the players do whatever they like I think it's important that players do have the capacity and scope to do their own thing within any tactical system, at the moment with the England side I don't think there's much capacity in the players to do much thinking themselves nor much scope of them to do so in Southgate's dull fest setup.
Technique has been the big buzzword for the last few years but I've always felt intelligence is just as, if not more so, important yet it still seems criminally neglected in a lot of cases, so many players are still heavily dependent on instruction rather than developing their own understanding and ideas.
