Breaking News: Wayne Rooney names star England should have dropped for Grealish as Paul Ince destroys major theory

Paul Ince disproved a widely held belief regarding the current Three Lions group, while Wayne Rooney questioned Gareth Southgate for leaving Jack Grealish out of England’s Euro 2024 roster and named the player who should have been cut instead.

When the Three Lions play Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, they will start their journey to put a stop to 58 years of suffering. With a wealth of attacking skill, Gareth Southgate’s team is among the favourites to win the 17th European Championship. However, they fell to Italy on penalties in the final on home soil the previous time around.

With Southgate acknowledging that failure to win the trophy would probably result in his dismissal as national manager, many analysts believe England will never have a greater opportunity to win a trophy than they do this year.

“I most likely won’t be here anymore if we lose. Thus, it could be your final opportunity, Southgate said to BILD.

The nature of international football is that, in my opinion, almost half of the national coaches depart following a competition.

We’ve gotten really close in the nearly eight years that I’ve been here. People eventually lose faith in you, so you can’t stand in front of the public all the time asking for a bit more.

“You have to step up in key situations if we’re going to be a great team and I want to be a great coach.”

The Three Lions were fortunate enough to leave behind players such as Marcus Rashford and Grealish, two of their key players from the 2022 World Cup, thanks to their abundance of exceptional talent, which included Jude Bellingham, a candidate for the Ballon d’Or, and Harry Kane, one of Bayern Munich’s top goal scorers.

Paul Ince makes fun of the England theory
Some have even said that Southgate’s current England team is the greatest he has ever had at his disposal, thus there are no justifications for them not winning the Henri Delaunay Cup.

But Ince, a former midfielder for Manchester United and Liverpool, has disproved these assertions, putting an end to the brag and casting doubt on such notions.

“Is this England’s best-ever squad? It’s not even close to the truth. It’s really absurd,” he said to bet365. “If you truly go back to previous squads, like the one from 1990, you need take a close look at the players, particularly in midfield.

“With all due respect, this team includes players like the inexperienced Adam Wharton, Kobbie Mainoo, and Declan Rice; in 1990, there was also Bryan Robson and Paul Gascoigne.” Midfielders like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, who played in more recent times, are exceptional players.

Nevertheless, Ince acknowledges that England does have a chance given the declining calibre of international football.

He continued, saying, “I think some people are thinking that this is certainly a very good squad based on previous tournament results at the squad that was beaten by Italy and advanced to the 2018 semifinals.

“However, you must recognise that players today are not at the same level as the ones we faced in 1996. It has undergone significant modification. Not as high as it was in our day and age.

There were a tonne of elite players, even if you look at someone like Romanian Gheorghe Hagi. I don’t think you have that calibre of play with international teams now days. We were competing against players similar to those of Italy’s Nicolo Barella and, later on, Marco Tardelli and Paulo Rossi in international football.

Rooney: Grealish ought to have been selected for England
“The level of international football has dropped for me, which means that England have a very good chance,” Ince said in closing. They have an excellent team. It is absurd, though, to claim that this squad is the greatest of all time.

England’s second-highest goalscorer of all time, Wayne Rooney, felt he should have been on the plane and left 36-cap Grealish behind.

Rooney has suggested that Southgate ought to have benched Jarrod Bown in favour of the Manchester City player, arguing that he could have contributed something different.

“Grealish, I would have taken him,” Rooney stated in an interview with The Overlap podcast. Saka, Cole Palmer, and Foden are available to play there, with Bowen on the right. Rather than taking Bowen, I would have chosen Grealish.

With 20 goals and 10 assists during the season, Bowen had another successful season for West Ham.

Grealish, on the other hand, seems to have fallen further down the City hierarchy under Pep Guardiola, recording just three goals and three assists in the entire season, raising questions about his future at the Etihad.

James Maddison of Tottenham was among the well-known players missing, as Southgate explained: “All the players took the news really respectfully.” Naturally, every player will believe that they deserve to be there, which is why they are elite players.

“They have that mentality and belief in themselves, but the reality is that we have some players who have been thriving in the league all season.

“We simply felt that other players had better seasons overall, especially over the last six months or so.”