England Sent Their National Team to Boot Camp with the Royal Marines

I must confess, while watching Harry Kane prance around after scoring a goal, I have never once thought, What can this man learn from the troops? I guess this is why I don't work for the England Football Association, because those are, apparently, just the kind of ideas they're looking for to help their national team actually win something for a change.

To get fired up for their upcoming games against Scotland and France, manager Gareth Southgate and several members of the squad visited the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre, where, according to the press release, the team donned camo uniforms and got dunked in cold water. Do yourself a favor and go look at the photos of a very groomed Harry Kane standing like a financier's renegade son sent to military school to learn a little respect.

Why did these high-priced footballers play military dress-up for the weekend? "We wanted to come and put the guys into a different environment, something they weren't expecting," Southgate explained. "The Marines talk about a dislocated expectation, and that was part of the theme of the camp—how will we be adaptable in moments of difficulty for us as a team?"

Wow, what an innovative and interesting angle to sports management, you might think. But you'd be wrong. See, for example, this article from 2006, which, among other things, definitively proves that the universe is timeless. "The whiff of scandal was the reason Sam wasn't given the England job," reads the Daily Mail headline, which was printed a full ten years before the Sam in question, Sam Allardyce, was in fact given the England job and then fired after one game for more than a "whiff" of scandal.

Anyways, in the 2006 article, Big Sam is credited as having a "slightly unorthodox approach to football management. He calls it 'dislocated expectation'—the element of surprise he employs in keeping his players mentally motivated. On a day when they expect another hard slog in training, Allardyce will suddenly announce that they are having a pool tournament or going toilet-seat racing."

Allardyce went on to say, "Sometimes doing something beyond the norm can be very good for morale."

So here we are, in the year 2017 of sports management theory, where toilet-seat racing and playing military dress-up are in the same category of Team Building Exercises. England is on the cutting edge now, folks. Time to sit back and wait for the World Cup trophies to pour in.