Is there a more underrated player in Premier League history than Michael Carrick? Or does the fact that received wisdom now tells us that he is like a latter-day Vincent van Gogh, unappreciated in his own time, now atone for the fact that he only managed to make 34 England caps?Some of the players to have won more caps than the Manchester United man – and a player who has won every club trophy it’s possible to win when you spend your entire career in the Premier League – create a list which is astonishing to read.
Stewart Downing, Emile Heskey and Glenn Johnson have been capped more times for England than Carrick, Jack Wilshere and Danny Welbeck have the same number. And although they don’t all play in the same position as the Manchester United captain, perhaps that’s the most telling part of the whole thing: England’s loss during Michael Carrick’s career perhaps wasn’t quite missing out on his talents but missing out on the chance to deploy a player who, perhaps more than any other, would have adapted his national team to the modern game.
The three-man midfield systems came into vogue around the same time as Carrick was starring for Tottenham Hotspur. He moved there from West Ham United in 2004 and stayed for two seasons, but in that time football – and not just in England – changed quite dramatically.
Although Manchester United had won the European Cup in 1999, their defeat to Real Madrid in 2000 seemed to shift the power in Europe away from Manchester and towards Madrid, who dominated European football around the turn of the century instead of the Red Devils. By 2005, things were changing.
Liverpool’s triumph against the odds in Istanbul against AC Milan in 2005 was the start of a heavy English presence in the latter stages of the tournament up until 2012. Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea all joined the Anfield club in reaching the Champions League final in the mid-to-late 00s, and perhaps Jose Mourinho’s arrival in England was a spark to ignite the league’s ability to compete in Europe’s top competition in a way that the country’s clubs had failed to do since the Heysel disaster and subsequent ban from European competition in 1985.
It wasn’t just that Mourinho was a Champions League winning coach when he arrived in England that did it. It was also his use of Claude Makelele in the holding midfield role, which effectively withdrew a striker in favour of a defensive anchorman in front of the defence.
United’s capture of Carrick, then, was fairly important. And it’s telling that United, who hadn’t won the Premier League since 2002/03, won their first title in four years in the 2006/07 season – the year Carrick joined the club and made 33 appearances in the league (52 in all competitions), as United reached the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 2002, as well.
In the summer of 2006, Alex Ferguson bought Carrick from Spurs for £13m, and was the club’s only permanent signing, with only Tomasz Kuszczak and Henrik Larsson arriving on loan.
It would be simplistic to lay all the credit at Carrick’s door, of course. United were vastly improved and rumours of Ferguson’s demise had been greatly exaggerated, but at the same time, this was still a team who had finished second in the Premier League the season previously, and had young guns Wayne Rooney, and particularly Cristiano Ronaldo, beginning to show their true potential.
But it’s not simplistic to suggest that Carrick’s place in the team was crucial. Although he wasn’t always an automatic starter, he played a role which allowed more freedom to others in the team, safe in the knowledge that their teammate would do his do his defensive duties, whilst still being able to start attacks from deep.
Perhaps the biggest injustice in Premier League history is the fact that most people see Claude Makelele as a defensive spoiler. Whilst it’s true that the Frenchman wasn’t the most gifted central midfield playmaker of his age, he certainly wasn’t a blood and guts defensive midfielder who was tasked with kicking silky number 10s. He was also there to start attacks after winning the ball back.
Carrick gets more credit for his passing. Partly because he was admittedly a better passer, but it might also have to do with the fact that the England man was never seen as a tackler. His ability was in reading the game and intercepting the opposition’s passes – a great ability to have for stopping counter-attacks.
United, with Carrick in the side, reached the final of the 2008 (which they won), 2009 and 2011 editions of the Champions League, and that’s probably no coincidence. And the fact he found himself alongside Paul Scholes and Owen Hargreaves in behind Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez in that 2008 triumph makes you wonder about those 34 England caps. It makes you wonder about England’s slavish devotion to 4-4-2, and it might even make you wonder about Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, too.
If Carrick had played behind the Liverpool and Chelsea twosome who ‘couldn’t play together’ in a two-man midfield, just how much different would it have been for England’s ‘golden generation’? But perhaps more interestingly, what would have happened if Scholes could have been coaxed back from retirement to play alongside his United teammates of Hargreaves and Carrick, in behind a front three including Wayne Rooney and two others?
In the end, it’s all conjecture, of course. So much has been written about England’s missed opportunity, and perhaps the problems ran deeper than team selection and formations, anyway. Spain’s emergence in 2008 – around the same time as Barcelona beat Carrick and United in not one but two Champions League finals – may well mean that idea sinks before we get to go very far with it. But it’s hard to overlook the fact that the four years before United signed Carrick were the worst the club had endured in the Premier League period up until that point.
When he arrived, Ferguson’s side found their groove again. Perhaps England could have done, too.