Adrian Bevington World Cup 2022 Column: Saluting England's backroom

It's been fantastic to see England progressing through the competition as well as they have. Yes, the USA game maybe wasn’t their best performance, but it’s all about negotiating the group phase and getting into the knockout games, and England have done that really well. Everyone’s fit, some key players are finding their form and most of the squad have had some time on the pitch – I doubt Gareth would think it could have gone much better.

Obviously, the focus is trained on Gareth and his players, but when you’re at a World Cup, they’re actually only a part of the picture. Everyone who’s working behind the scenes is just as important, and I often think people don’t realise just how much work goes on to try to ensure the players are at their absolute peak when they go out onto the field.

There’ll be a huge group of support staff working in the England team hotel – there’ll certainly be more staff than players out in Qatar. The biggest group within that is the medical and fitness staff, and they’re absolutely key to keeping the players right for every game.

There’ll be two or three physios with the team, including the senior physio Steve Kemp, and they’re basically on call 24 hours a day, as are all the medical staff really. There’ll be one or two team doctors, probably two, and at least three masseurs, maybe four.

The masseurs actually have more contact with the players than pretty much anyone – they’re continuously busy with the players, making sure they’re in the best shape. Sometimes, those massages can go on long into the night. I remember in 2002 in Japan, the night before the Brazil game in the quarter-finals, I was heading along the hotel corridor to bed and I heard Michael Owen cry out in real pain because he was being massaged to try to keep him right. We brought in a Dutch guy, Richard Smith, specifically to work with us for that tournament and Michael obviously needed him. It worked though because the masseurs managed to get him out on the pitch the next day, and he scored the opening goal.

There’ll be an osteopath out in Qatar, Carl Todd, who is absolutely brilliant, as well as a full sports science team. And that’s before you get to the analysts, who are effectively an entire team of their own.

No stone will have been left unturned in terms of scouting and preparing for Senegal – Steve O’Brien and Mike Baker are two of the best analysts around - and each of the players will have been given individually tailored video packages showing what to expect from the players they might be lining up against on Sunday. The work for that will have started way before the tournament kicked off, but it won’t just have been Senegal – the analysis team will have been preparing for every eventuality and mapping out every possibility in terms of who England could come up against in the knockout stages. Then, those preparations will be refined after every game that takes place in Qatar.

One of the things you have to prepare for at this stage of the tournament – but that no one actually wants to talk about – is the flight home. At most World Cups, you’re working out the logistics of getting to each knockout game, but that’s obviously not really an issue in Qatar, where everything is in one place.

You still have to plan for what happens if you lose a knockout game though because the players won’t want to be hanging around after they exit the tournament. They’ll expect to be straight home.

Jordan Henderson prepares to board England's flight to Qatar (Image: PA)

England will have a charter plane on standby – I’d imagine it’ll be the same plane that flew them out to Qatar – but once you know your knockout schedule, you’ve got to be in regular contact with the airports and airlines to work out possible flight schedules. There’ll also be regular contact with Tony Conniford, the head of security, and he’ll be constantly liaising with UK police and government departments.

You wouldn’t normally fly back on the night of losing a knockout game, but it’ll almost certainly be at some point during the next day. Those logistics have to be worked through because you’re talking about packing up everything at the hotel and training ground and getting it all transported across to the plane. Sometimes, that can be quite challenging.

Gareth obviously won’t want to be having those conversations, and most of it will have been mapped out before everyone left for Qatar. There’ll be certain things that need firming up though, and even though you don’t want to think about going home, there’ll be members of the backroom team that have to work on it.

I saw that the players and staff had a bit of social earlier in the week – I think it was a barbeque – where they could meet their family and friends. I think that’s really important. When you’re at a tournament, you’re away for a long time, and although you’ve got a job to do and you’re in this amazing bubble because it’s the World Cup, you can still get lonely or start missing people.

The balance obviously has to be right, and while some players are desperate to see their family, there are some that would rather not have to deal with the emotional issues that maybe throws up. In general though, I think everyone benefits from seeing their loved ones every once in a while.

Again, that’s not just the players. All the staff are away for a month or so too, and they’ll have moments when they’re finding it difficult. For me, the 2006 World Cup in Germany was probably the most intense tournament I was involved in, and I remember being so happy that my wife was able to come out for two or three days and we had a social day where we could meet up with everyone else and their families. All the players and staff have lives, with things going on, and that doesn’t just stop because you’re at a World Cup.

I was on record before the tournament saying that I thought that, from a players’ perspective, a World Cup in Qatar would be the best tournament ever, and I’ve seen nothing to dissuade me from that view. Having everything in such close proximity is a massive help to the players, and the quality of the facilities, both in training and on a matchday, looks absolutely superb.

I fully understand all the reservations about Qatar being awarded the World Cup, but from a logistical point of view, it was always going to run like clockwork, and that’s what’s happened.

There’s one other point that’s struck me watching the games, and that’s the fact that this is the first World Cup to have been staged in the Middle East or North Africa, and regardless of all the issues surrounding the tournament, I think that’s something to be celebrated.

It’s been great watching the games involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Tunisia – they’ve basically been home matches for those nations and their supporters have been able to attend in the kind of numbers that haven’t previously applied to those countries.

Morocco fans celebrate their side's qualification for the World Cup knockout stages (Image: PA)

Sometimes, I think it’s easy for some of us in the so-called bigger footballing nations to assume we’ve got the right to have every major tournament on our doorstep so it’s easy for our fans to attend. Supporters in the Middle East and North Africa are just as passionate and devoted to their teams, and it’s been great to see the way they’ve turned out in real numbers to turn the tournament into a celebration for their part of the world.