In the first of two posts, Jonny Sharples picks his favourite squads, from the nearly men to the gloriously overachieving. 

Managers are often heard discussing the importance of having a squad: the depth of it, the balance of it, the blend of it. If you get the right mix of players and you could challenge for, and sometimes win, trophies; get it wrong and you could see fall outs within the squad and trouble on the pitch. Sometimes, though, the squad that a manager brings together can just been really fun or really interesting. It can capture your imagination and strike a chord with you for nothing more than being exciting or having a somewhat cult feel.
I decided to pick five of my favourite squads that, for whatever reason, have stuck in my head throughout the years. Each squad is selected on the basis of a particular season or tournament that they were brought together, reflecting the temporary nature of players being teammates one minute and opponents the next…

=5. A.S. Roma, 2000/2001

By the turn of the twenty-first century Italian football had been resident on British television for almost a decade, on Channel 4’s Football Italia. Presented by the now renowned sports presenter James Richardson it gave access to top flight Italian football to a large number of British football fans, one of which was me. And my team of choice? A.S. Roma.

The 1999/2000 Serie A season saw Roma’s city rivals S.S. Lazio claim only their second ever league, and their first in twenty-six years, thanks to the likes of Marcelo Salas, Alessandro Nesta, Pavel Nedvěd and Juan Sebastián Verón. Fabio Capello’s Giallorossi, without a title themselves since 1983, needed to react and they did so with the big money signings of Bayer Leverkusen’s Emerson (£15m), Walter Samuel from Boca Juniors (£17m), Hidetoshi Nakata of Perugia (£18m) and one of the finest strikers in Serie A history; Fiorentina’s Gabriel Batistuta (£30m). The big signings joined a squad already containing the likes of World Cup winning full-backs Vincent Candela and Cafu, the latter’s Brazilian teammate Aldair, and Italian international trio Damiano Tommasi, Vincenzo Montella and Francesco Totti, the twenty-three year old club captain.

The title race was between the two clubs from the Italian capital and Juventus, and by the final game of the season it was between Roma and Juve to see who would lift the Scudetto, with the former playing at home to Parma knowing a win would guarantee them their third Serie A title, and the club from Turin facing Atalanta. Goals from Totti, Montella and Batistuta gave Fabio Capello’s side the championship, but not before the match was disrupted by a pitch invasion by gleeful Roma supporters, leading Channel 4 to abandon their coverage of the game with seven minutes left.

Seventy billion lire man Gabriel Batistuta scored twenty top flight goals and Motella and Totti both reached double figures, Tomassi and Emerson anchored the midfield allowing flying full backs Cafu and Candela licence to get forward and charm a young adolescent from north-west England into nagging his parents for a tight fitting claret replica shirt.

A bulk of the side stayed together for the next season, albeit with Nakata departing for pastures new with Parma, as the side from the Italian capital finished second to Juventus by a single point. However, with an eighth placed finish in 2002/2003 and no Football Italia on Channel 4 anymore my love affair with the Giallorossi has dwindled, and A.S. Roma haven’t won a Scudetto since.

=5. England, 2006 World Cup

While a Roma side full of big names secured their place in history with a superb championship win, the same could not be said for the England team that went to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. However, the promise and talent in that twenty-three man squad puts them on equal footing with the 2000/2001 Serie A title winners. It was the last chance for the so-called Golden Generation to etch their name alongside the likes of Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and the rest of the England side from 1966 and it also represented England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson’s swan song after announcing he would leave his post at the end of the tournament. And it was the last time that I believed, as an England supporter, that we could win the World Cup.

Although players such as Ledley King and Jonathan Woodgate missed out on the final squad through injury, Eriksson could still take the kind of central defensive quartet that Roy Hodgson would love to select for the upcoming World Cup; Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand, Chelsea captain John Terry, Sol Campbell of Arsenal and Liverpool’s Jamie Carragher. Meanwhile in midfield the talents of David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Owen Hargreaves and Joe Cole could be called upon, with Michael Owen and the now talismanic Wayne Rooney chosen as two of England’s striking options. Of course, the squad wasn’t without it’s surprises as a 17 year old Theo Walcott was picked ahead of more experienced names such as Emile Heskey, Darren Bent or Jermain Defoe.

England had eased through qualifying, losing just one game away against Northern Ireland, and they were expected to make light work of their group in Germany too after being drawn in Group B alongside Paraguay, Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago. A 1-0 win over the South Americans, a 2-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago and a 2-2 draw against the Swedes, featuring a pearler of a goal from Joe Cole, saw England through to the second round but at a cost as Michael Owen snapped knee ligaments in the early stages of the final group game, but with Wayne Rooney returning from injury things started to look brighter for England, who would face Ecuador for a place in the quarter finals.

A freekick from captain David Beckham, scoring in his third consecutive World Cup, secured an edgy 1-0 win over the Ecuadorians. Eriksson was now making full use of his squad with Owen Hargreaves starting the game at right back and Michael Carrick coming into the midfield holding role. The quarter final in Germany would be a repeat of the Euro 2004 match up between England and Portugal, Gary Neville returned for Michael Carrick as Hargreaves moved into midfield, but a red card for Wayne Rooney limited England. The match did, though, highlight the importance of Owen Hargreaves to the England side as he put in a superb performance in the remainder of the game and extra time.

England went on to lose the penalty shoot-out, Eriksson resigned and was replaced by assistant Steve McClaren, David Beckham gave up the captaincy, Owen Hargreaves, England’s 2006 Player of the Year, would only win five more caps, and England failed to qualify for Euro 2008. The Golden Generation had missed their best opportunity to lift a major international trophy, and I haven’t believed we are capable of winning one since.

4. Leicester City, 1998/1999

If England’s squad of 2006 underachieved and the Serie A winning A.S. Roma side matched expectation then it’s safe to say Leicester City in the mid to late nineties were a team that overachieved. The club from the East Midlands reached three League Cup finals in four seasons, winning two, and under the guidance of Martin O’Neill they consistently finished in mid-table on a relatively limited budget compared to those around them. Although the Foxes finished the 1998/1999 season empty handed, losing out to Tottenham in the Worthington Cup final, the squad read like a who’s who of late twentieth century Premiership cult heroes.

In goal was the ever dependable U.S. international Kasey Keller who won over a century of caps for the Americans and every good squad needs an able back-up between the sticks and they don’t come any more able than Pegguy Arphexad. The man from Guadeloupe is the archetype second choice goalkeeper, playing just thirty-nine league games throughout his career. Nonetheless, Arphexad managed to win three League Cups, an FA Cup, a UEFA Cup, the Charity Shield and the UEFA Super Cup, the latter six trophies coming after moving to Liverpool. In defence O’Neill had a number of solid, but unspectacular, names to choose from including Frank Sinclair, Gerry Taggart, Pontus Kåmark, Rob Ullathorne, Matt Elliott and the club captain, Steve Walsh.

However, if the defenders were somewhat forgettable it was in midfield where the Foxes had plenty of strength with the likes of Andy Impey, Neil Lennon, Robbie Savage and Theo Zagorakis, who would go on to lift the European Championship trophy as Greece captain in 2004. Alongside those four were two players who, perhaps, deserve special mention: Muzzy Izzet and Steve Guppy. The former was a classy central midfield player who complimented Lennon and Savage’s combative nature well and he could have (and in my opinion should have) played for England, but when the national side didn’t come knocking he turned out for Turkey at Euro 2000 and as they finished fourth at the 2002 World Cup. As for Steve Guppy, he is a man whose left foot, set piece delivery and hard work deserved more than a solitary England cap won against Belgium in 1999; for a nation that had a “left sided problem”, the Leicester winger deserved better.

In attack two men at the opposite ends of their careers often took the field together; a twenty year old Emile Heskey and a thirty-three year old Tony Cottee. Heskey, with pace, power and strength even from an early age, combined well with the wiser and more experienced finisher Cottee, and together they scored twenty-five goals for Leicester City in the 1998/1999 season.

They may have ended that season empty handed but the blend of players, alongside a manager who helped them overachieve, made them greater than the sum of their parts. Many of the squad helped Leicester win the Carling Cup a year later but Emile Heskey moved to Liverpool for £11mn soon after, and was followed away from Filbert Street by much of the squad before the club were eventually relegated from the Premier League in 2002.

By Jonny Sharples –