Look across the past decade and it’s a story of gradual progression, a new confidence borne out of heavy investment in tandem with a defined strategy.

Former England boss Steve McClaren predicted earlier this week that the next ten years could be dominated by his homeland and while we tend to scoff at such bold predictions in these parts, a standpoint borne out of years watching our neighbours crash and burn at the final hurdles, there are knowledgeable figures involved in the game here that now feel that the belief is justified.

Even if they flounder against Italy, the foundations are established to ensure they will come again. Shelbourne technical director Alan Caffrey, who left his old job in charge of top schoolboy nursery St Kevin’s Boys earlier this year, remembers the day he realised England were about to become a proper force.

It was back in 2012 when they appointed Dan Ashworth as their new director of elite development. Ashworth was academy director at West Brom when Caffrey worked there in the 2000s and he knew England were appointing the real deal.

“I remember emailing him when he got the job and saying, ‘Oh my God, England are actually going to be successful now,’” laughs Caffrey. “When you meet Dan, he’s got a clear vision of what he wants and where he is. And he is strategic in terms of how you’re going to do it and how you get the right people – and good people – into the job.

“In that role, it’s about having a plan and a good relationship with people and then getting them to go out there and carry it out. Whoever made the decision to appoint Dan can take a lot of credit for what’s happened now because I knew when he went there they were going to start pulling things together.”

Ashworth’s appointment by the FA was hugely significant but the wheels for improvement were already in motion because of developments that were happening at club level. England’s rise and the emergence of a dressing-room stacked with talent is a product of the immense wealth of the Premier League belatedly being channeled in a way that can benefit their national side. Portions of the cash flowing into a sport propped up by ginormous TV revenues were diverted to where it was needed.

Ged Roddy was the architect of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) that was released in 2012 when he was the Premier League’s director of football development. There was depth to the plan, which dealt with age group activity from U-9 up to U-23 level, but the central aspect of it was the categorisation of academies across English football and the introduction of demanding criteria. Critics of the proposal said it was weighted far too heavily towards Premier League clubs, with compensation rules allowing them to pick up players cheaply from smaller entities that may have produced them.

Controversy lingers around that. Indeed, a trend of recent years is operations such as Brentford, Huddersfield and Wycombe effectively scrapping their academies because they couldn’t compete with the big boys.

By contrast, Brighton and Hove Albion, a popular destination for Irish teens from these shores, is an example of an outfit that has risen to the challenge and created an academy facility that has wowed observers within England and further afield.

“When the EPPP was set up, it was about setting up a criteria of excellence,” says John Morling, the head of Brighton’s academy and a familiar name in Irish football circles after a seven-year spell with the FAI where he managed the U-15, U-16 and U-17 international sides and headed up the Emerging Talent programme.

“If you wanted to be Category 1, you needed to have a certain number of pitches and staff, an indoor area, an education department and other boxes that had to be ticked. It had to be really high level. If you couldn’t quite reach those levels you would go to Category 2 or Category 3 or Category 4. There was massive investment in resources and facilities to ensure clubs could fit into those criterias and there was a ring-fenced budget available there with funding from the Premier League if you met them.

“Suddenly, every club had to be player development-orientated. The whole set-up is more structured, professional and accountable. You get audited all the time. You might be Category 1 but you get audited every two or three years to make sure you’re doing what you say.”

The investment led to an increase in training time and hours at all levels and a Premier League-funded elite coach apprenticeship scheme that naturally improved the situation on the ground. Results speak for themselves in terms of the quality and style of players that are now announcing themselves on a global stage.

Morling says the evidence is there when you see the depth of Southgate’s squad and that’s before considering the players left out and the production line coming through. Foden, Saka, Sancho, Grealish and co have changed the image of the English player abroad.

On Thursday night in Oriel Park, Dundalk playmaker Will Patching reflected on his 13 years in the Manchester City academy. He trained with Jadon Sancho and Phil Foden on a regular basis and Marcus Rashford was a frequent teenage opponent. Patching was tipped for the top at one stage but he’s rebuilding his career now after a challenging patch. Standing out in a hugely competitive field has really asked questions of players of his generation.

“It’s crazy to think what players who were around the same age group as me have experienced in such a short period of time,” says the 22-year-old, who is a joy to watch when in full flight. Jack Byrne was a team-mate too, evidence of how clubs like City are adept at nurturing a particular type of player.

“Go back 10 or 15 years and people always say English lads are not technically as good as their European counterparts,” says Morling. “But now in Europe they want young English players.”

Ashworth’s move to the FA was linked in with an attempt to build on what the clubs were about to do. The growth of a world-class training facility at St George’s Park can be traced back to the early 2000s and Howard Wilkinson’s attempts to replicate the famous French base in Clarefontaine. It’s a high-performance hub that plays host to sides from all codes, including the Irish rugby team prior to the 2015 World Cup.

A year earlier, Ashworth introduced the concept of the English DNA which was about delivering consistency across the national teams at all levels. This was extended to style of play, talent identification, and the other fundamentals that would underpin the path forward.

At the launch, he was joined by then U-21 boss Southgate who spoke about the importance of speed. His words have aged well. “The big thing that has changed at that level is the athletic capabilities you need,” says Morling. “The pace at which they can break is phenomenal.”

Caffrey watched on enviously, knowing Ashworth had the skills to knit it all together. “Dan was ridiculed for the English DNA thing. But he looked at the coaching structure; the coaching badges and felt it didn’t reflect on modern football,” he says. “He looked at the staffing structure, he felt a lot of people had been there a long time which tends to happen in FAs and that needed to be changed and restructured.

“For a long time in England, it was clubs against country and he managed to marry that. ‘This is what you’re doing, now tell us what you’re doing and we’ll meet.’ He was able to do that successfully on the basis of having been an academy manager and technical director and he knew the frustrations of the clubs when lads went to international football.” St George’s Park was the perfect home to sell a new vision and promising players – including then Irish international Declan Rice – were invited to tour there when they began to show promise.

Ashworth left the FA in 2018 to take up a new role as technical director of Brighton, where Morling now works with him day to day. Caffrey reckons that his old friend had achieved everything he needed to do with England, knowing the right structures were in place as he began.

The legacy of the various initiatives is a fit-for-purpose system that suits the local landscape; there’s a flawed tendency to call for a copycat approach when things click for a particular country but if there’s any lesson to be learned from England it’s that they found a method to maximise their (deep) resources. Within that, individual clubs have the freedom to do things their way.

“Everyone has different philosophies and I can only speak for what we do,” says Morling, who is an important figure from an Irish perspective with recent recruits Evan Ferguson, Andrew Moran, Leigh Kavanagh and James Furlong coming through their ranks and following in the footsteps of Aaron Connolly and Jayson Molumby.

“We don’t play the same system in all of our teams. If we have two good wingers, we’ll play wingers. There always has to be room for good players, no matter what type we are. There are always trends in the game. So much of it is about speed now but when we get around to Qatar next year or the World Cup in America four years after that there will be other trends.

“What we have is principles that stay the same. Every club has their own DNA but collaboratively what we can see is the amount of investment that went in ten years ago is bearing fruit and it’s still evolving.”

Football coming home may depend on the outcome of the decider. But whatever happens, it appears England has finally got its house in order.