Why didn't Matt Le Tissier play more for England?
The Maradona of the Channel Islands
Today, I’ve dived into an internet wormhole full of conspiracy theories and wild conjecture and no I do not mean Matthew Le Tissier’s views on coronavirus and the holocaust.
I mean the classic pub argument of ‘why didn’t England managers pick Matt Le Tissier?’
My deep dive was sparked by a post in the Facebook Group ‘English Football in the 1990s’. Basically, the sentiment was Le Tissier’s eight caps were a paltry return for a player of his talents.
It’s always easy to suggest a player should have played more but international football is a zero sum game. For Le Tissier to have played more someone else would have to have played less and I wanted to explore whether that was true and, if so, who owed the Southampton man some caps.
My memory of Le Tissier was of a supreme talent, who was the only thing separating Southampton from relegation most seasons. However, he also had the look of a pub footballer who just couldn’t be arsed to run.
Looking at the stats Le Tissier had two golden periods in his career 1989-91 and 1993-95.
In 1989-90 Southampton finished 7th, scoring 71 league goals. Only champions Liverpool found the net more frequently and there was talk of Le Tissier being called up for the Italia 90 squad.
Bobby Robson was looking to add some fresh faces ahead of the tournament but Le Tissier never cracked the England squad despite scoring 20 First Division goals that season. Indeed if England B selections were to be believed Le Tissier was behind Dalian Atkinson, Alan Smith and Marco Gabbiadini in the England pecking order.
Lineker, Beardsley and Bull went to Italy as the out and out forwards with two youngsters called David Platt and Paul Gascoigne getting the nod as attacking midfielders. So, given how the tournament panned out I think we can give Robson the benefit of the doubt for not picking Southampton’s finest.
When Graham Taylor took over from Robson England should have been looking to the future. The World Cup success had tied Taylor’s hands a little with the former Watford and Aston Villa manager sticking to the 3-5-2 formation and much of the personnel that charmed the nation in the summer of 1990. Up front that meant Lineker. Bull and Beardsley retained their places. However, in his autobiography, (which never mentions Le Tissier,) Taylor did admit to wanting to ease Bull out of the international side as he thought his game was limited for the level.
Le Tissier was called up to the England squad but only for a testimonial match featuring an England XI played for Peter Shilton’s benefit in December 1990. England won 4-0 against a Rest of the World XI with Lineker, Le Tissier, Gascoigne and Kevin Keegan all getting on the scoresheet.
In 1991 with Le Tissier again in red hot form there was definitely an opportunity for Taylor to blood the Southampton forward but he chose to give opportunities to Ian Wright (Crystal Palace), Alan Smith (Arsenal) and Nigel Clough (Nottingham Forest) instead.
Most puzzlingly, Le Tissier doesn’t go on the end of season tour to Australasia in 1990-91 in which Taylor has agreed not to select any players from Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United leaving him without Beardsley, Smith and potential call up Paul Merson. Sheffield duo Brian Deane (United) and David Hirst (Wednesday) make their debuts on the trip instead.
Diet and attitude are the most likely explanations for the striker's continued absence from the national team in this era. His autobiography Taking Le Tiss proudly retells the story of a time he fainted at Southampton training following indulging in too many Sausage and Egg McMuffins. He liked a Malibu and Coke too. Taylor already had one overweight playmaker with a drinking problem. Did he need two?
In February 1992, Le Tissier was on the bench for a strong England B team against France B and makes the bench for the A team the following night but it’s another Southampton striker, Alan Shearer who got the starting place alongside Hirst. The following month Mark Hateley received his first call up for four years to play against Czechoslovakia and was paired with Merson.
Le Tissier was falling further and further out of favour as his club form dipped, returning only six goals in 32 league appearances during the 1991-92 season. Merson, a future Soccer Saturday colleague of Le Tissier became Taylor’s preferred choice as a second striker/advanced playmaker, playing twice at Euro 92.
Watch the official Premier League YouTube clip of Le Tissier’s best goals and notice just how many of those great goals that you remember happened between October 1993 and December 1994. Normally, when the Sky Sports cameras were in attendance.
The two sublime goals against Newcastle on Super Sunday, the thunder-bastard against Liverpool after 26 seconds on Monday Night Football; the Wimbledon free-kick he flicked up to himself to volley; the time he embarrassed Tim Flowers at Ewood Park - this was his golden period. It was around this time that Xavi became ‘obsessed’ with Le Tissier.
Had England qualified for the 1994 World Cup it is almost nailed on that Le Tissier would have forced his way into the squad for the tournament alongside Shearer, Wright and two of Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand and Teddy Sheringham.
After the disappoint of not qualifying for USA ‘94 Graham Taylor jumped before he was pushed, with Terry Venables eventually being announced as his replacement in January 1994. Venables first game wasn’t until March 1994 but alongside Peter Beardsley (Newcastle United), Les Ferdinand (Queens Park Rangers), Alan Shearer (Blackburn Rovers) and Ian Wright (Arsenal); Le Tissier made the squad.
Le Tissier and Graeme Le Saux posing for press, as the first two Channel Islanders to be called up to an England squad.
Ian Darke summed it up best when commentating on Le Tissier’s England debut, versus Denmark as a 67th minute substitute replacing Paul Gascoigne.
”A big, big chance for Matthew Le Tissier to prove he can be an England player. His talent and skill is absolutely undoubted but there have been question marks sometimes about his level of commitment and consistency.”
For the next year Le Tissier was consistently in Venables’ plans. He played in six of the seven matches that first year El Tel was in charge, a period that coincided with his finest domestic form.
After three substitute appearances his first start was against Romania but Jimmy Hill’s assessment summarising for the BBC was ‘not consistent and not in the game enough’.
After starting the ill-fated friendly against the Republic of Ireland in February 1995, Le Tissier was miffed to find himself dropped from the squad. He sensed conspiracy. (Of course he did) when in reality the more simple explanation was Venables was responding to outstanding form of Andy Cole, who had just moved to Manchester United for £7 million and knocked five (Videprinter: FIVE) past Ipswich.
Le God’s 1995-96 season was a disappointment. Le Tissier scored just seven goals all season (including a hat-trick on opening day) as Southampton avoided relegation on goal difference. He’d fall behind Sheringham, Ferdinand, Robbie Fowler, Stan Collymore and Cole in the England pecking order but Glenn Hoddle’s appointment as England manager gave him a route back into the national fold.
It was hoped that Hoddle, seen as the archetypal wasted talent on the international stage would be able to get the best out of our erstwhile geniuses like messrs Gascoigne and Le Tissier.
Again Le Tissier came on for Gascoigne in an England manager’s first game in charge - this time a ten minute cameo away in Moldova, a game more famous for David Beckham’s debut. But quickly again he faded from view.
An unused substitute for the next two England matches as Sheringham, Ferdinand and Wright were given chances, Le Tissier got an unlikely reprieve in the crunch qualifying game against Italy. Hoddle picked him to start - a fact confirmed by his brother Karl to a national newspaper 24 hours before kick off, giving Italy rather more time to prepare for the swerve than Hoddle would have liked.
Le Tissier had the best chance of the game from an England perspective but headed wide when it might have been easier to score. After 60 minutes he’s withdrawn in favour of Ferdinand and that was his senior England career. Fowler began to be regularly selected for at least bench duty and a young Paul Scholes made a persuasive claim for the team to be built around his prodigious talents. That pass to set up Wright in Le Tournoi.
Sadly, Le Tissier’s finest performance in an England shirt occurred in a B international against Russia. He scored a hat-trick that many felt would earn him a place in the France ‘98 World Cup squad but Hoddle continued to prefer Paul Merson and Teddy Sheringham.
Le Tissier’s explanation for his few number of caps is simple enough.
“England managers weren't brave enough to change their formation to accommodate me.”
Carlton Palmer, a teammate at Southampton and someone Le Tissier has publicly beefed with in recent years had a more brutal assessment
“The one-club-player tag is endearing from the outside and nourishes the view of him as a loyal and principled man, but the reality was different. He just couldn't be arsed. The reality was Matt Le Tissier: plenty of talent and no hard work, eight England caps; Carlton Palmer: not so talented and plenty of hard work, 18 England caps.”
His popularity endures far more in the minds of nostalgic fans. Just in May 2020, he was voted the best Premier League player of all time. One of the benefits of being a one club man is to have an extremely loyal fanbase you can call on to rig social media polls.
Eight caps does seem a meagre return for his talent, but then again so does three caps for David Hirst’s talent, Stan Collymore deserved more than three also. The problem with England in the 1990s was the bottle neck at centre forward meaning that Shearer aside no one else really got that caps their talent merited and all were just a few poor showings away from dropping to the back of the pack.
Maybe Taylor should have given him a cap earlier, say 1991, and it’s easy to point to someone like Nigel Clough and say those could have been Le Tissier’s caps - but it wasn’t like Clough was a bad player and equally they could have been Beardsley’s caps as he wasn’t flavour of the month under Taylor either.
The bottom line is they would have been Le Tissier’s caps had he applied himself more. England didn’t squander Le Tissier’s talents, he did.