Pearce builds a bridge for player promotion

One of the buzz words of the summer for those following the Olympics was "transition". It was, we learnt, the part of the triathlon in which swimmers become cyclists and, later, runners; and apparently applies too in the 200 metres to the change from running round the bend to straightening up. Now Stuart Pearce, coach to the successful England Under-21 team, is talking about the importance of wanting "the transition to the senior team to be as smooth as possible" for his young hopefuls.

That was one of the reasons for staging Friday night's European Championship qualifying game against England's principal rivals, Portugal, at Wembley, instead of the more normal Championship ground. On a miserable night, almost 28,000 turned up to see a 2-0 victory that makes England the group winners, although there is still a play-off to negotiate before the finals in Sweden next summer.

Several of his Under-21 squad, such as Micah Richards (currently injured), Theo Walcott, Joe Hart, Tom Huddlestone and Gabriel Agbonlahor, have already made the transition from time to time. Walcott must know better than to make plans around these international weeks; picked for Wembley this time, he was suddenly promoted to the seniors instead, while Huddlestone stayed where he was, despite Capello badly needing a holding midfield player. Agbon-lahor, meanwhile, was the star of the night, destroying the technically adept Portuguese with his pace and well supportedfrom the flanks by James Milner and Middlesbrough's Adam Johnson in the 4-3-3 formation that the Under-21s favour.

Once with the seniors, of course, they must fit into a different system: English football has not yet managed to have all its age groups playing the same way, as leading continental countries have often done. For Pearce, however, who has the benefit of working with the seniors as soon as his duty is done at the lower level, the important thing is helping players make the step up.

"I can't see any reason why some of the guys shouldn't be playing at the World Cup finals if they keep playing well and maturing," he said. "They've got a bit of traffic to get through.

"The one thing the players know is they've got a manager at this level that's coaching with the seniors as well. There's an information network that goes straight through to Fabio, and he's been very open-minded about players coming down to play for me and then going to play for him. We had five or six from this squad away in Trinidad at the end of last season."

Uefa have made one of their more sensible decisions in playing the Under-21 finals in odd-numbered years, avoiding the senior competition and also World Cups. The 2007 tournament in Holland attracted much greater interest and publicity, even though England won only one game and lost their semi-final on penalties to the host country by the extraordinary margin of 13-12 – their only defeatin the past 25 matches. On the back of that Pearce was made full-time coach, taking on additional duties with the senior team after Capello was appointed.

Pearce believes the system can work to the benefit of both: "Credit to Fabio, he's left me Joe Hart, who could have been with the seniors, and one or two others that we've talked about that we feel are good enough to be in the senior squad. But he knew the importance of this game for us. There are more than one or two that put a shift in here that will give Fabio a nudge."

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