Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

FA blaming lack of English players in Premiership for England struggles

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was a bit dismayed about the comments of Trevor Brooking in the run up to the England vs Israel game. He and the FA believe that the number of foreign players in the league is harming our own aspirations. Really, why is this Sir Trevor? “Well,” he says, “take a look at Italy, almost all their players play in their league and they won the World Cup” Good point Sir Trevor, but statistically it’s a little irrelevant, it’s a bit like saying “I flipped a coin and it came up heads, so it must always come up heads” So, lets have a look around the other power houses in International football shall we….
OK, lets start with Germany. They had a good showing last time around with a young team and yes, the vast majority of them are playing in Germany. OK, they were playing at home, but let’s let Sir Trevor have that one. let’s move on. How about Brazil, France, Argentina and even Portugal? Can’t think of too many of their top players playing in their domestic leagues, can you? Now let’s take a quick look from the other side of the fence, what about other nations that have a strong domestic league with plenty of home grown talent playing in it. Well we have dealt with Italy and the Premiership, the other big domestic league is in Spain - the perennial under achievers in world football. They have been even worse than us with nothing to show of note in the international game. So the balance is, while not conclusive, in favour of the teams that have their talent playing in the more competitive leagues around the world.
Sir Trevor went on to then blame the acadamies of the Premiership sides for not taking in enough local talent. I’m sorry, am I hearing this right? Whose job is it to get kids up to a decent standard by the time they are 11-13 when they are likely to be taken on by one of the Premiership sides? Why should it be that other nations are producing kids with more technical ability than ours that means they get the palces in the acadamies? It’s the FA’s job to get these kids up to standard. The way we teach it is terrible. In Gianluca Vialli’s book ‘The Italian Job’ he points out that in Italy kids that want to play are taken off and given proper training, including after school. In the UK, everyone is sent out for a few hours on a Wednesday afternoon and it is made to feel like a torture. There is no way of taking the keen, talented and motivated kids off to do something to make them into the players the acadamies are looking for. One of my friend’s has a 13 year old son and his school has had one of the best local teams for years. They do not have football as one of the sports they teach, all the kids that want to play do so outside school hours.
The simple fact is though, that you need to sift an awful lot of dirt to find a nuggest of gold, the more you can sift, the more you will find. Luckily the nuggets will also catch your eye - OK this metaphor is getting a bit stretched now, let’s put it this way, the Gerrards of the world were obviously good from a young age and were then picked up. The teams need to stay ahead of their rivals and finding this talent is their priority, regardless of it’s source. Going back to my stretched metaphor, if you don’t find any gold in the stream you are sifting, there maybe more elsewhere, it helps to spread your efforts.
Now lets take a quick look at the other side of this arguement. The FA claim with the dearth of English players making the grade we are harming the national team. Sorry, but the competition means that only the good get to the top. The stronger the competition the better they need to be. If they are really trying to tell me that the current England first team is not good enough, then please explain why it is that the likes of Lampard and Gerrard are almost always in the running for player of the year awards? Look down the England team sheet and there are very few really weak spots when the team is fit. In fact there are very few spots where the team doesn’t have depth too. I mean Jamie Carragher is talking about retiring from the international game because he cannot guarentee himself a first team place.
So, why aren’t we winning? Well, we currently have a coach that has never won anything of note. He had an immensely lucky run to the final of the UEFA Cup, but what else? Had the FA not completely screwed up by deciding they needed to have a new coach before the last World Cup, we could have had a Scolari or a Hiddink. As Scolari rightly pointed out he could not accept a new job prior to the World Cup as he still had to motivate his team. Hiddink also rightly said, that they know what he does, if they want to offer him the job great, but he is not going through an interview process. I mean what do the FA think they are doing, recruiting a new intern?
The simple fact is that the Premiership is the most watched sports league anywhere in the world. It is no longer ‘ours’, I’ve walked around in Malaysia, South Africa and even parts of the USA and you see Chelsea and Liverpool shirts being worn and games on in the bars. The clubs and the Premiership itself have the onus on them to make it as entertaining and competitive as possible. The talent coming through from the grass-roots is the FA’s responsibility, so whinging about a lack of English talent coming through is basically complaining about not doing their own job properly. The FA still shares too much DNA with the organisation that for years refused to send a team to the World Cup and even fined Manchester United for playing in the early days of the European Cup. It needs a good kick into the 21st Century