Ray Parlour wishes he’d got more England caps
Ray Parlous thinks he'd have received more than 10 international caps if he'd played for Scotland or Ireland, rather than England.
Ray Parlour wishes he’d got more England caps.
The former Arsenal midfielder is hugely proud of playing for his country but thinks he’d have made more than the 10 appearances he had if he represented somewhere else because the competition for his position at the time was so fierce.
He told FourFourTwo magazine: “Playing for my country was my proudest moment.
“Probably the one regret I’ll always have is that I wish I’d got more caps, but Alan Shearer was one of the best players ever to play for England and he only got one Premier League medal, so I can’t complain – I got more medals playing for my club.
“I fell out a bit with Glenn Hoddle at the start over Eileen Drewery but Kevin Keegan came in and he was a totally different manager – very good with the players.
“Sven had great midfielders coming through in Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, and Paul Scholes was still in the team and he was younger than me, so it was always hard to get into the team – and you had David Beckham, who got 115 caps. If I was playing right midfield, I had no chance of playing in front of him.
“If I’d played for Ireland or Scotland, I would have probably got 100 caps, but I really enjoyed playing for England.”
And Ray enjoyed his downtime with the squad too.
He added: “We won loads of money playing cards!
“I played with Teddy Sheringham, Dennis Wise and Jamie Redknapp. Teddy was hard to beat – he was a poker player – and Dennis was good too.
“There were a couple of bad players as well though, and you could nick all their money off them.
“Michael Owen wasn’t the best. Alan Shearer was like Father Christmas! It was all good fun.”
