Normally I am very much against players getting booed while playing for their country. It can come across as rather petty and certainly doesn’t do any favours to the team you are allegedly supporting.

But in Jordan Henderson’s case I am going to make an exception.

The former Liverpool captain was on the receiving end of some crowd verbals last week, both when he was taken off during the game against Australia and when he was brought on in the game against Italy.

This prompted Gareth Southgate to launch a passionate defence of the player, saying he has always given his all for England, and to be on the receiving end of booing “defies logic”.

Then Harry Maguire, a man who knows a thing or two about being booed while playing for club and country, also jumped in to defend Jordan. “Proper England fans don’t boo players,” he said.

But Maguire and Southgate are both missing the point.

This isn’t Henderson getting grief from the crowd for making a mistake on the pitch, a loss of form or something performance-related. He is getting stick for betraying his principles.

One of the clearest cases in football of sheer hypocrisy and very worthy of a boo or two

During his time at the pinnacle of the English game, he used his elevated status as one of the most famous footballers in the country to champion the rights of the LGBTQ community. He was one of those players who never missed an opportunity to wear his rainbow armband or laces.

But in the summer he moved to the Saudi Pro League and, in doing so, essentially offered his backing and approval to a country where same-sex relationships are illegal.

Last week he doubled down on his endorsement of the unendorsable by excitedly supporting Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2034 World Cup.

A man who spent years saying how important it was for all people to have equal rights irrespective of their sexuality then gives a very public thumbs up to a country where being gay can get you 500 lashes and five years in prison.

He signed for a team that greyed out his rainbow armband on the picture they used to publicise his arrival – just because they were prepared to pay him stupid amounts of money.

It is one of the clearest cases you will ever see in football of sheer hypocrisy and it is, in my opinion, very much worthy of a boo or two.

Delusions of grandeur

Of course, away from the boos, there was a bit of football played over the international break and England, as you are undoubtedly aware, qualified for Euro 24 with a comfortable victory over Italy.

And the ease of that victory has prompted England fans to do what they do best in these situations, which is to get completely carried away in a manner that can only be described as hopelessly deluded.

No sooner had the referee’s whistle blown on the 3-1 win than supporters were taking to social media to proclaim that next summer the Three Lions will be “bringing football home”.

There’s nothing like letting a tiny slice of success go to your head.

Yes, their victory over Italy was decent and it allowed them to qualify with two games to spare, which is always nice. But anyone who is getting excited by this win is failing to take one important thing into consideration – this was a pale imitation of the Italy sides of yesteryear.

I was brought up on Italian teams that had impenetrable defences, fluid and creative midfields and devastating attacks; teams that could defend for weeks on end without conceding a goal or even breaking a sweat; teams built around cultured stars with the ability to unlock defences; and forwards that could make goalkeepers look like fools.

The current Italian team has none of those. In fact, it is even a poor shadow of the one that beat England in the Euro 22 final at Wembley – and that team itself was far from vintage Italian.

Italy are going through a transitional period. Luciano Spalletti has only been in charge for a few games and he has been hampered by a combination of losing players to scandals and, more tellingly, a talent pool so shallow its more of a puddle.

They will come good again soon, of that I have no doubt, but I just wanted to put England’s win into some sort of context in the hope it will temper some of the outlandish hype.

The reality is that England undoubtedly have a team capable of lifting the trophy. What they don’t have – and I may have mentioned this before on the odd occasion – is a manager capable of leading them to that glory.

Southgate was capable of getting past a poor Italian team with ease – but would anyone really bet on him masterminding victory in a crucial knock-out match next summer against the likes of Spain, France, Portugal or Germany, backed by a home crowd?

It doesn’t matter how many good players he has at his disposal, Southgate lacks the tactical awareness and, more worryingly, the bravery to guide a team all the way through a tournament.

The current crop of English players may well be, as more and more people are suggesting, even better than the generation which contained John Terry, Sol Campbell, David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen.

It could very well be that Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Jack Grealish, Marcus Rashford and Harry Kane are the new golden generation.

But things didn’t exactly work out for the last golden generation either because, like this one, they had a manager in charge who is barely a bronze...

E-mail: James.Calvert@timesofmalta.com

Twitter: @Maltablade