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You reap what you sow. England are one victory away from a first World Cup final since they won the tournament in 1966.

On Wednesday, they take on Argentina in their fourth semi-final appearance in five major tournaments. It’s an impressive run considering they only went that far once in 12 attempts between 1992 and 2016 — and that came on home soil at the 1996 European Championships, ending in a penalty shootout defeat to Germany.

When Thomas Tuchel took over as head coach nearly two years ago, he referenced the achievements of his predecessor, Gareth Southgate, who started the deep runs with a semi-final finish at World Cup 2018.

“We will build on it,” Tuchel said in his first press conference. “Gareth did a fantastic job in terms of sustainability and continuity. Look at the results in tournaments; it’s outstanding consistency, a strong record.”

The seeds were sown back in 2012 with the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). That document, implemented with The FA and The English Football League (EFL), was a blueprint to rewrite academy football, focused on the long-term future of the national team and its player pool.

It’s worth remembering how England got here, particularly as the United States is self-examining its youth soccer setup and pay-to-play system after they were dumped out of a home World Cup in the round of 16 by Belgium.

Why is talent development the critical factor for international success? Because tournaments are shorter than league seasons, coaches get less time than at club levels to implement tactical plans, and talent cannot be bought, only developed. World Cups are won not over a few weeks but in the decade prior.

England knew this in 2012. They failed to qualify for Euro 2008 and Germany beat them 4-1 in the first knockout round of the 2010 World Cup. All the while, minutes for homegrown players in the Premier League were dropping and the poor results of the senior men’s national team were considered symptomatic of a problem that was only likely to get worse.

Neil Saunders, director of football at the Premier League, explained this to The Athletic in May 2024 — just a few months before England reached a second consecutive European Championship final, with 19 of their 26-man squad having spent time in academies since the EPPP’s introduction.

“The EPPP was born out of a perception that English players and players coming through our system weren’t technically as advanced or tactically as astute as some of our European counterparts. We needed to see a step change,” Saunders said.

The mission statement was to develop “more and better” homegrown players, with a vision of having a “world-leading academy system”.

Saunders explained the measurable finer points: “It was focused in its objective, not that that meant it was easy to achieve, but it gave us absolute clarity around what we were going after: more game time for young players in the Premier League and across the professional game, more contact (training) time.”

Looking across other sports, even as far as ballet and tennis, they realised how little footballers were training, so increased the frequency, but knew this would be redundant unless coaches got better too.

“We quickly tripled the number of full-time coaches in club academies,” Saunders added. “Through working with the FA and others, we created age-appropriate coaching qualifications, so that coaches were working with under-9s weren’t coaching in the same way as those working with under-21s — much as you wouldn’t expect a primary school teacher to be teaching the same content or using the methods as a college or university lecturer.”

Support staff roles were formalised and mandated, like sports scientists and performance analysts. How many each age group needed was to be determined by the club’s academy category, another reinvention, with a 1-3 tiering system replacing the older, binary classification as academies or centre of excellence.

Academy players all receive tailored individual development plans. They can be tested and assessed physically to better understand their maturation levels. This is hugely important for preventing late-developing players being released before they flourish, and for when growth spurts happen, because those physical changes can, temporarily, make players technically worse.

The EPPP also brought changes to the games programme (the matches and tournaments players play in). In 2016, they rebranded the under-21 Premier League to the Premier League 2, making it an under-23 competition. This was intended to better bridge the gap to senior level, allowing extra time for late bloomers and making it more possible for talented youngsters to feature in the under-23s and first team interchangeably.

To help finance all this, the Professional Game Youth Fund was set up, which takes four per cent from all Premier League and EFL transfer fees and, in addition to supporting other initiates, some of it goes directly to clubs in the form of grants. As the Premier League has become the strongest in Europe, and its transfer fees now the highest by some margin, the trickle down to academy level has got bigger.

How do you measure the success of the EPPP? In a few ways. The “more and better” part has been fulfilled. As per CIES, a football research group, at the 2022 World Cup, more players had trained (spent three-plus years between the ages of 15 and 21) in England than anywhere else. Even more than France, one of the leading countries for youth development, and somewhere England had previously looked for inspiration.

Twenty of Tuchel’s 26 players at this World Cup are EPPP-era academy graduates. They came through at 13 different clubs and, as a squad, are the joint-fifth youngest at the tournament.

The number of academy-trained Premier League debutants is well over 500 since 2012 and, post-Brexit, many more Englishmen are moving to the continent to play in Europe’s other major leagues.

Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane are perfect examples, at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively. Bellingham was a textbook early developer while Kane needed multiple loans. Noni Madueke, now at Arsenal, left Tottenham Hotspur in his late teens to join PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands and broke through there, while Jarell Quansah (Liverpool) and Marcus Rashford (Manchester United) left boyhood clubs for the sake of their careers.

Five Englishmen have transferred for fees of €100m or more, all since 2021. That includes Bellingham plus midfield partners Elliot Anderson and Declan Rice, graduates of Newcastle United and West Ham’s academies. Tuchel has a €300m trio in the centre of the pitch.

Success is self-fulfilling. England youth teams won multiple age-group World Cups and Euros in the late-2010s. Southgate, who was the under-21 coach before he took the senior job, had the perfect background to help manage the transition. It’s also why Lee Carsley (under-21 boss) stepped up as interim head coach between Southgate’s resignation and the appointment of Tuchel.

In 2023, England won a first under-21 Euros for nearly 40 years, beating Spain in the final, and then they defended their crown with an extra-time win against Germany last June. The likes of Anderson and Quansah played in that second final, and are making their senior tournament bow a year later.

“We have players who compete in the strongest league. We have the ingredients,” Tuchel said in his first press conference. “We fully believe this is the moment to install some football patterns and behaviours that can help push this team over the line.” He was certain that England had the talent: it was the tactics that needed improving to win something.

Being ambitious, especially publicly, is also important, even at the risk of looking silly.

“The goal is to try to win — and not to be shy about it,” Tuchel said when he announced his squad in May.

Back in 2013, FA chairman Greg Dyke made a speech. In it, he lamented the lack of game time for English youngsters in the Premier League but set the men the target of a semi-final at Euro 2020 and then to win the 2022 World Cup.

The FA complemented the EPPP with publicising “England DNA” in the mid-2010s. They detailed how they wanted future national teams to play and what would be required — technically, tactically, physically, psychologically and socially — of future England players.

Putting a pin in a competition and giving yourself a decade to get better is worthwhile. Of course, it’s easier for England to do that than others. The cities are not too far apart, the league has always been at a good level, and football is the national sport.

For others, and the U.S. especially, they have to start somewhere.

Mauricio Pochettino was an ambitious coaching hire and the offer to keep him through to 2030 would be a statement. But only in early 2024, they did announce “The U.S. way” and their “Pathway strategy” that aims to make soccer the national sport is, currently, more theoretical than practical.

Success is reaped from seeds sown many years in advance. If anyone can learn anything from England’s re-rise — and four semi-finals in five tournaments — it’s that progression takes time, investment, honest self-reflection and bottom-up improvements.