The latter two can fairly boast comparison with the finest centre-halves of this generation. Both men are Champions League winners, and have been long-term mainstays of club teams which have dominated the pinnacle of the English game for the past decade.
The root of Dyke’s fears – rightly – is the cascading influx of foreign players into the Premier League. Terry’s development into genuine world class footballer was, however, expedited by his playing alongside the excellent Portuguese Ricardo Carvalho at Stamford Bridge.
Furthermore, in common with Ferdinand, and his modern day counterparts, Terry benefitted considerably through the regular challenge of going toe-to-toe with some of the planet’s foremost attackers.
Cahill and Jagielka are well-versed in attempting to thwart; Robin Van Persie, Sergio Aguero and Luis Suarez, as well as combative home grown adversaries; Andy Carroll, Peter Crouch, and Lambert. Roman Zozulya and Oleg Gusev, therefore, held no fears. More impressively, neither did the gravity of the encounter.
If the more creative minds of this England unit struggle to replicate distinguished club form when they pull on their national team jerseys, then that trait is very rarely true of our reliable supply-line of resolute central defenders.
In Ukraine, Cahill’s display echoed that which he produced for Chelsea in the 2012 Champions League final, and again in this year’s European Super Cup – both matches against what is presently the best football side on the planet – Bayern Munich. Authoritative, aerially dominant, composed, and boasting exquisite positional sense, those epithets which are applicable to Cahill, are no less befitting of Jagielka.
What’s more, while Cahill’s comfort on the ball – in both halves of the pitch – has long been recognised, Jagielka is improving that aspect of his own game, and will be expected to evolve it further under the tutelage of Roberto Martinez at Everton.
There is nothing new in England’s defenders emerging from this type of decisive, tension-filled fixture as heroes of the day.
The image of a bloodied Terry Butcher, with his head swathed in bandages, fighting onto the last of a 0-0 draw in Sweden to secure his country’s passage to the 1990 World Cup finals, remains one of the most readily identified in English football’s storied history.
Butcher’s partner at the Italy based tournament – when England were agonisingly close to reaching the final – was Des Walker, a defender blessed with pace and style.
Bobby Moore, for his being the hands which lifted the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1966, will forever be remembered as a legend of English football. The ex-West Ham player’s many champions, though, speak equally fondly of a man who, apparently effortlessly, mastered the defensive art.
For many years we took for granted the warrior presence of Tony Adams who, when confronted with the more refined tactics favoured by Terry Venables, and then Hoddle, adapted his style and flourished to an even greater degree.
We were granted Sol Campbell’s colossal and reassuring occupancy of an England centre-back spot on 73 occasions between 1996 and 2007. The less cultured, but nonetheless fantastic defender, Martin Keown, won 30 fewer caps than his ex-Arsenal colleague, often finding his way blocked by Campbell, and other Highbury team-mate, Adams.
With our rich heritage for generating bona fide international central-defenders, one of the more shocking factors of England’s limp exit from the last World Cup – demolished by a younger, more proficient and savvy Germany side – was the manner in which Terry and Matthew Upson were comprehensively over-run, and pulled this way and that, by Miroslav Klose, Mesut Ozil, Lukas Podolski, and Thomas Muller et al.
Now, the fledgling Cahill and Jagielka combination is rapidly re-building their country’s reputation for its healthy stock of solid, dependable, and yes, superior centre-backs.
It’s a start.
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