Soccer: Give youth a chance, Sven

Aaron Lennon replaces David Beckham late on against Ecuador. Picture / Reuters

Sven-Goran Eriksson may not be aware of it but Aaron Lennon spent much of his early career playing as a striker at Leeds United's academy. He was transformed into a winger when he broke into the first team at 16 and now, under the England coach, he has a new position. As a substitute.

It is hard to remember a young player who has accomplished so much of what has been asked of him and for so little reward.

He transformed the match against Trinidad & Tobago; against Ecuador he sparkled in the space of four minutes. Watching him calmly run down the clock in possession, or burst through the Ecuador midfield, Lennon begged the question of Eriksson: How much longer can you do without me?

Precocious young talent has a habit of forcing the most conservative, unswerving managers to examine what they thought they knew and change their minds. Lennon's emergence is no different to that of Bryan Robson, Paul Gascoigne or Wayne Rooney when they broke suddenly into the England team.

The difference is Lennon has arrived at a point in the history of the national side like no other. He waits patiently for a place in an England midfield that has all the flexibility and inclusiveness of the House of Lords before the abolition of hereditary peerages. Eriksson swaps people around but the England midfield quartet - and we know who they are - seem to have jobs for life.

This is not a treatise against David Beckham, or Frank Lampard or Joe Cole, but recognition that Eriksson now has a player in Lennon whom he can no longer ignore. He provides something no one other than Rooney has: pace, and the precious ability to go past a defender. On the two occasions that the 19-year-old has come on to the pitch, he has looked every inch a World Cup footballer.

Lennon might be young enough to experiment with shaving lines into his eyebrows but when the camera settles on the teenager, he has an unflinching, icy look.

As a bedraggled Beckham garbled encouragement to him on the touchline against Ecuador, Lennon barely gave him a glance. He came on and suddenly England seem to be playing the same pacey, edgy game that Argentina and Germany have exhibited at their best. Jurgen Klinsmann has talked about a new kind of European football, in the counter-attacking style of Barcelona or Chelsea, that he wants for his Germany team - Lennon is England's natural exponent of the art.

The irony is that, for all the sluggishness and muddle of England going forward, Eriksson picked a squad that seemed capable of stretching and outpacing teams. He took Lennon, Rooney and a striker called Theo Walcott, the latter now lost from view.

Walcott's position is unfortunate. By all accounts, he has acquitted himself well in training and expected to have some kind of role against Ecuador. But as his senior teammates made such hard work of disposing of the South Americans, his chances, perhaps of ever playing at this World Cup, evaporated.

Eriksson has failed to keep his side of the bargain with Walcott - but he has a chance to redeem himself with Lennon. In five and a half years in charge of England, Eriksson never spotted a player ahead of a club manager, or recognised a quality no one had seen before. It took Jose Mourinho to make an international out of Joe Cole; Frank Lampard was moved around midfield until Paul Scholes retired.

In Lennon, Eriksson can seize that chance. The player impressed for Tottenham last season but he was by no means a certainty to supplant Shaun Wright-Phillips. Eriksson's decision was bold and Lennon responded to his faith splendidly. Lennon has been a football prodigy since he was signed by Leeds' academy, aged 10. He is an unpretentious character who has spent his spare time in Baden-Baden with his brother Anthony.

Raised in the Little London district of Leeds, it was there, with family, that he spent his last few spare days before he met up with the squad last month.

History will tell us that Eriksson recognised the first glimmer of an international in Lennon when he took him, uncapped, to the World Cup. But the Swede has a chance to leave a more profound legacy - finding a place in his team for the next generation.

- INDEPENDENT