James Maddison has the right to be disappointed. He was injured when his form was good at Tottenham and returned to find his team faltering and unstable. None of those problems were his doing.
He has performed well when called up by England recently, including a cameo off the bench against Bosnia and Herzegovina on Monday in Newcastle, when he helped raise the tempo in a friendly played at a pedestrian pace.
“Devastated is not enough,” Maddison said on Thursday, but he can have few complaints about the decision, and if reports of an immature exit tantrum are accurate, boss Gareth Southgate is entitled to think this selection decision was a wise one.
Questions about attitude have dogged the 27-year-old midfielder since his teenage years when, depending on who you ask, he was either blessed with extreme confidence or too flashy for his own good.
The consequences of the casino episode have been difficult to overcome. That was in 2019 when Maddison went uncapped.
James Maddison failed to make Gareth Southgate’s final 26-man squad for the European Championship
England manager Southgate revealed the club’s recent form was a key factor in his decision
Maddison enjoyed a fruitful start to the season with Tottenham, as the team won eight of their first 10 games.
He left Southgate’s team feeling unwell ahead of a Euro 2020 qualifier in the Czech Republic, only to be photographed at the poker tables at a Leicester casino on the night of the game.
A month later, he again won his first cap as a substitute against Montenegro, but waited more than three years to get a second, after which he laughed at the poker furore, stating that it was “ridiculous” and had been “overblown.” of proportion”. ‘, insisting that ‘it was no big deal for Gareth’.
Maddison likes playing cards and pool, and enjoys an evening playing darts so much that he has turned arrows into his signature goal celebration, an opportunity that Brentford striker and string artist Neal Maupay found too difficult to resist.
After scoring the Bees’ first goal at Spurs in Maddison’s first start after his injury, Maupay borrowed the move and celebrated by pretending to throw darts at a television camera.
The pair exchanged words on the pitch and the contest became increasingly tense as Spurs won 3-2, celebrating the goals with more imaginary darts. The nonsense kept coming later.
“He probably hasn’t scored enough goals in recent years for his own celebration,” Maddison said on TV, prompting Maupay to respond on social media with “More goals and fewer relegations in my career than James Maddison.”
Yesterday, as Southgate’s decisions crystallized, Maupay returned to social media to post a photo of himself holding three darts as the dartboard surrounded his radiant face like a halo. Another comical bullseye from Brentford’s answer to Jim Bowen is pretty funny and, while Maddison might need time to appreciate the funny side, it will improve the pair’s ranking in a desperately thin field vying to be the Premier League’s most interesting personalities .
Certainly, Maddison’s popular appeal is enhanced by her refusal to conform. His interviews are rarely covered in the vanilla of the footballer. He has a sharp wit and a know-it-all touch and is not afraid of his own opinion.
Brentford striker Neal Maupay (right) trolled Maddison after he scored for the Bees against Spurs in Maddison’s first start after returning from injury in January.
The Spurs endured a couple of slumps during the season, including a five-game losing streak in their final seven games of the season.
It’s great for those of us in the media, but perhaps not if you’re the England manager wondering how you might react to a second successive major tournament in which you’ve been firmly on the sidelines. It is true that others have made errors of judgment under Southgate and have overcome them more easily. Phil Foden’s discipline let him down when he and Mason Greenwood broke strict lockdown rules to smuggle girls into the England Hotel in Iceland in 2021.
That hasn’t stopped Foden’s serene progress to 33 caps, although that’s largely because he dug in and produced a sustained period of excellent form and a brilliant array of medals for Manchester City.
Unfortunately for Maddison, there is a lot of talent at his position and he hasn’t put up the same numbers as others during the second half of the season.
He started brightly at Tottenham and faded at the end after three months out with an ankle injury.
Spurs followed a similar path: they missed him when he was away and Ange Postecoglou’s team was different when he returned. They were less fluid, not as skilled, and plagued with changes from game to game.
Maddison’s game is all about vision and perception.
See patterns of play, detect rhythms, and find connections. He makes incisive passes around the penalty area, creates space in congested areas and has a goal threat. Just the sort of thing England need to unlock the deep defenses they so often encounter.
Southgate, however, has a few others who can do something similar. Foden is Footballer of the Year and does those things consistently at an elite level for City. Cole Palmer’s goals in a prolific season at Chelsea have been crucial, putting him ahead of Maddison in the reckoning. Eberechi Eze was integral to the late blooming at Crystal Palace.
Spurs missed Maddison when he was away and Ange Postecoglou’s team was different when he returned
The emergence of Eberechi Eze (centre) and Cole Palmer (right) has finally left Maddison without a place in the team.
Jude Bellingham can operate in the same areas of the pitch as he does for European champions Real Madrid. Players like Jarrod Bowen and Anthony Gordon bring other qualities, wide players who have pace and intensity and run at defenders, providing a direct threat on the counter-attack.
At Spurs, Postecoglou’s high line squeezes play into a smaller area, demanding Maddison’s skill and guile on the ball, allowing him to play in midfield without being expected to win tackles, advance from box to box or dominate the box. physically.
England won’t perform the same way, not least because they lack the same speed of recovery in defence. Southgate then asks his team questions about how he sees his team progressing in the group matches against Serbia, Denmark and Slovenia and, hopefully, in different tests in the knockout phase of Euro 2024.
Do you have the balance to shapeshift from one type of opponent to another? Flexing within a game using substitutes? Do you have coverage if you lose a couple of players?
Those questions may be in the back of your mind, along with the casino night and Maddison’s physical history.
Physically, can he be trusted? An ankle injury sidelined him for almost three months of his first season at Tottenham. A knee injury also limited him in the early stages of his final season at Leicester.
Southgate took him to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where he was not fit for the first two games and was not required for the other three.
But lingering doubts like these would have been eclipsed by a better way. The key factor at play is that Maddison’s form at Spurs since his return from injury in late January opened up the case for his inclusion.
Maddison hasn’t scored in three months and finished the season with only five goals to his name.
He hasn’t scored for three months. He has scored one goal since the fall. He finished the season with five goals.
Eze scored five in the final six games of the season for Palace and Palmer scored five in six days in the spring for Chelsea.
That will have surpassed anything that happened in the casino.
