England U20 squad from 2001.....

Someone bought this up on the FA England Fans forum, this was an U20 squad from 2001 that faced Portugal in a friendly, mental seeing how many of these actually went on to make senior apperances, or not as the case may be... and how many are not not even playing football (Leon )

Jay Bothroyd – Coventry City
Peter Clarke – Everton
Peter Crouch– Portsmouth
James Davis – Manchester United
Matthew Etherington – Tottenham Hotspur (on loan to Bradford City)
Rhys Evans – Chelsea
John Halls – Arsenal
Karl Henry – Stoke City
Russell Howarth – York City
Andrew Johnson – Birmingham City
Joe Keenan – Chelsea
Leon Knight – Chelsea (on loan to Huddersfield Town)
Paul Konchesky – Charlton Athletic
Gary McSheffrey – Coventry City
Boaz Myhill – Aston Villa
David Noble – Arsenal (on loan to Watford)
Kevin Nolan – Bolton Wanderers
Stuart Parnaby – Middlesbrough
Paul Reid – Glasgow Rangers
Marc Richards – Blackburn Rovers
Rohan Rickets – Arsenal
J Lloyd Samuel – Aston Villa (on loan to Gillingham)
Jordan Stewart – Leicester City

Isn't the U20 the rarely used U21 reserve team? Not sure it is a fair representation of the best U20 talent.

I would say the success rate of that team isn't too bad actually.

Walt Jabsco said:

I would say the success rate of that team isn't too bad actually.

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Are you being serious? Unless I missed someone, only two of that squad went on to get an England cap. At 20 years old, the stars of the future should be being identified.

Compare that to the England U-19 cricket team, which has much more success. Here's an article from 2004 commenting on the way that the England U-19 team from 1998 failed to break into top class cricket. Of the 15 members of that team, 5 went on to play for England (four in the test team), yet that's considered a poor return. I think that's a bit harsh - although the Indy does point out other countries have a better return for the young players - but I would certainly expect to see about a third of U-20 squad going on to get full caps.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/class-of-98-lost-in-the-county-abyss-but-academy-offers-hope-572201.html

Wikipedia has links to a lot of the squads.
England national under-20 football team - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Looking for example at the 1999 Youth Championships squad, there are naff all players that made it; only Ashley Cole and Peter Crouch stand out, although I think Andy Johnson also has a couple of caps?

The 2003 squad is even worse, with only James Milner I think having any full caps.

Having said that, as matt points out, the U20s probably miss out a lot of the really good players as they go straight to the U21s.

Looking at the U21 squad from the 2000 European Championships, Lampard, Carragher and Paul Robinson got a good number of caps, while Seth Johnson, Danny Murphy, Lee Hendrie, Francis Jeffers, Ledley King and Luke Young all got capped by the senior side. Not too bad, that's 9 out of 16, although only 3 out of 16 with a decent amount.

sten_super said:

Wikipedia has links to a lot of the squads.
England national under-20 football team - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Looking at the U21 squad from the 2000 European Championships, Lampard, Carragher and Paul Robinson got a good number of caps, while Seth Johnson, Danny Murphy, Lee Hendrie, Francis Jeffers, Ledley King and Luke Young all got capped by the senior side. Not too bad, that's 9 out of 16, although only 3 out of 16 with a decent amount.

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3 out of 16 going on to get plenty of caps in the senior side is a decent amount. Get that every year and you're always going to have a team with a good varied mix of youth and experience.