A lasting memory from Theo Walcott's premature elevation to the England World Cup squad in 2006 is of him clip-clopping round Baden Baden with his family on a pony and trap. What started out as a chance to match Michael Owen's precocity ended up as a kind of school exchange. Four years later, even the sightseeing tours have been snatched away from him as Fabio Capello extends his new reputation for capriciousness.
“I was a baby-faced kid just enjoying the occasion,” Walcott says of his trip to Germany in Sven-Goran Eriksson's final 23-man squad: a promotion that preceded his first Premier League game for Arsenal. This was the normally cautious Eriksson's one big casino throw. “I only decided [to include him] this morning,” England's Swedish manager chirped on the day of a doomed squad's unveiling. Soon the England coaching staff were reporting that Walcott looked out of his depth on the German training ground and would have to confine himself to note-taking and consoling days out with his parents.
Boy Wonder is a label that hangs heavy round English necks, especially when Capello is backing out of previously stated policies, to be guided more by instinct and necessity. Aaron Lennon and Shaun Wright-Phillips, an impact sub at Manchester City, are the two chosen fliers ahead of Walcott, Capello's previous favourite, and Adam Johnson, who has displaced Wright-Phillips in the City starting XI.
Capello is paid £5m-plus a season to apply his considerable wisdom to these dilemmas. His record says hard logic will have been applied to the dumping of Johnson and Walcott. There is, though, an air of sadness around the double-humiliation of Walcott in his four years of national service.
The first blow was Eriksson's loss of faith in him in Baden Baden. This even more brutal rejection is inflicted by a leader whose reign blossomed with Walcott's thrilling hat-trick against Croatia in September 2008, and who has expressed a consistent hope that the hero of Zagreb would be his World Cup whippet in South Africa.
Below that surface there is a painful inference to do with young English talent. Walcott grew up idolising Owen and, with Wayne Rooney, was meant to represent a bright new age in which the Premier League clubs churned out native talent in line with its immense wealth. With his youthful spirit and nice manner Walcott always worn a sheen.
His dashing, counter-attacking style is exciting and audacious. The counter-point however has always been that speed cannot thrive without precision: a technical criticism that has been used against him like a mallet, and to which Capello evidently now subscribes. Sympathy only deepens when one realises that public opinion will not be outraged by Walcott's omission.
On the contrary, most England fans will observe that he made only 15 appearances for Arsenal in a season beset by shoulder, back and knee injuries. The momentum that propels a 21-year-old year-old wide striker with quick legs into a World Cup was never really there and could not be summoned from the ether in exhibition matches against Mexico and Japan.
The England coach has abandoned many of the old certainties in favour of an hour-by-hour approach. The stretching of the deadline granted to Gareth Barry completely contradicts Capello's initial promise that injured players would be treated as they often were by Bill Shankly at Liverpool, as invisible and irrelevant. England now travel to South Africa with a midfielder who has no chance of being fit in time for the opening fixture against USA, which is reminiscent of Eriksson's rather grander punts on David Beckham in 2002 and Wayne Rooney in Germany.
The other day over lunch in London, Carlos Alberto, captain of Brazil's World Cup winning side, picked out Walcott as one of the few England players capable of transcending the modern religion of endless triangular passing in favour of brave direct assaults. Like the punters on Betfair who backed Walcott at 33-1 on to make Capello's final cut, Carlos Alberto assumed the 21-year-old was a certainty to board the plane.
Capello evidently thought so too until he saw a false note or some dire deterioration in Walcott's play against Egypt, Mexico or Japan. Arsenal's English standard-bearer started in all three of England's preparation games in 2010 so the Italian can hardly be accused of denying Walcott the chance to prove himself, as he can with Michael Dawson or Scott Parker. Neither was asked to kick a ball against Mexico or Japan.
To name a 30-man provisional squad and then deny two of its members even a brief audition speaks of a certain high-handedness and is inconsistent with Capello's willingness to take Stephen Warnock at left-back. Warnock was also ignored for both friendlies yet makes the final 23 on the basis of six minutes against Trinidad and Tobago in June 2008. Johnson, meanwhile, was granted only half a dozen minutes to shine against Mexico and was not honoured with a second chance against Japan in Graz.
A revealing detail about Walcott's Arsenal career is that he has started 75 matches and appeared in 61 more as a substitute. His Premier League ratios are 44 and 42. These figures say he is injury-prone but also that he has been unable to apply his talent consistently. There may be a connection. Often overstated is his inability to deliver a telling final ball at the right time or to the right place. There are phases when he hits the spot most times. Wright-Phillips is at least as flawed in that department and, at 28, cannot cite youth or immaturity as a defence.
The best English wide players deliver no more reliably than Royal Mail: a modern weakness that may force Capello's teams to play more narrowly than he would like in South Africa, now that James Milner is primarily a central midfielder. Walcott was stoical in the face of the bad news, saying: “I completely respect Mr. Capello's decision.” But he must feel England managers are always sending him back to school.
© Guardian News and Media 2010
