Six months before the World Cup and already some folks in England are making excuses for why England can’t compete on an international level and, of course, the problem is all the damn foreigners. Sam Allardyce took one look at the Pompey Arsenal match and not counting any passports he liked decreed that the English game is under threat. But is it the foreign players who are to blame or is it something else? Could it be that the English managers and the English academies need to look at themselves?
By the time a player is 16 years old, he either has fundamentals or he does not have fundamentals. Heart, power, pace, pride, and the ability to put in a good tackle are all amiable qualities and it’s great to instill them in young men. But young footballers also need fundamentals like touch, dribbling, passing, using their off foot, efficiency, and vision. All of which just as important, if not more important, than power and heart.
To make a good international, then, you need academies and managers which teach players fundamentals other than lump and kick. Last time I checked on a “Big Sam” team the only two things he seemed to be teaching his English players was lump and kick.
English clubs are a bit hampered in this respect owing to the local boy rule which limits academy recruits to a small geographic area around the club. Spain has no such rule and as such the best and brightest students go to the best academies, like the one at Barcelona. If the FA were to abandon this rule then the best young players could go to the best academies, like at Man U, Everton, and Arsenal.
I understand why they don’t, they want to keep every club competitive. If all the young players went to Man U, then they would dominate the league in the same way that Real Madrid and Barcelona do right now. But given the fact that Man U already dominate the league I think that there’s at least one or two holes in the idea that limiting young men to a certain club has an equalizing effect.
But let’s not change that rule, what then? Well, I would do two things; first I would introduce a national academy and second I would reward clubs who brought in foreign players rather than punish them.
Could you imagine if 20 years ago England had a national academy, or even 9 regional academies, which took players from the age of 13 until they were 15 and taught them football fundamentals? Where is England’s Clairefontaine? Still being built, unfortunately. It’ll be 20 years before that academy will pay off, but if it’s done right, and if the managers teach the kids more than just lump and kick, it should pay huge dividends.
Second, foreign players are not the cause of the problems they are the solution. The English game is different and in a lot of ways, better, than the way football is played the world over. In fact, most countries have a distinctive style. Having a distinct style is a good thing, it’s probably the one thing that makes international football interesting. But while you want to have a style you also need to be adaptable, fluid in your playing style and have players who can change and play in unpredictable ways. And you can only get players, and thus teams, who have that ability by mixing them with other world-class talent. Playing at the top level, against and with top level opponents, who are different from you doesn’t make you worse it makes you better. Diversity is a boon, not a bane.
The simple answer and the answer that lazy managers like Allardyce want is to limit the ability of top clubs to sign top talent based on a player’s passport. Unfortunately what England needs is a revolution not a simple solution. France did it in the 70′s and it paid off with a World Cup and a World Cup, runner’s up medal. England could have one as well, in 20 years, but only if they turn their managers into world class managers, instill all of the fundamentals into the next generation of kids, and keep the diversity of the league the way it is.
Arsenal News 24/7
The english are just playing the blame game. whose fault is it that there are no competent english managers?
Can they blame foreigners?
If a country dont have a pool of competent players then of course it’s because they lack competent managers.
If only Allardyce was England manager. Can you imagine the quality of football we’d see at the World Cup?
Outline for an open letter to FIFA:
- start drafting plans for a World Club Championship (WCC) to be formatted along the lines of the current FIFA World Cup.
- to be held every four years at a predetermined location and tournament is in June/July. Sounds familiar.
- integrate each federation’s championship into qualifiers, eg: UEFA gets 16 spots and take round of 16 qualifiers from UCL as qualifiers for WCC. Note that every country gets equal representation. 2 from each? Even Ireland gets 2. Galway United in the same league as Manchester United. Awesome.
- retire current World Cup or create a new World/Federation Cup to follow the WCC in the same location and to be populated by an allstar team from each federation and coached by most successful coaches.
Send Sam Allardyce an invite since his Blackburn squad is doing the best job of not limiting to just players from England.
Senderos is a kid?
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=719623&sec=england&cc=5901
We should organise a game between Blackburns English players v our English players and see who is doing more for English football..
Tbh.. the answer That Fat Sam gave was to a question that Sky asked most managers and Sam was the only one that bit. They were just stirring it up.. Home grown when it suits or English when it suits..
No mention of Ramsey of course or the Scottish chap at Portsmouth..
You can bet your bottom dollar that pig-boy allardyce’s bleatings mean one thing and one thing only:
fungusbum has started seeing us as a threat to his beloved manusa again.
Pig-boy’s bleating is specifically in support of his bum-chum to unsettle us in any way they can.
Along with the scummy pond-life in the British football media we can from now on expect a constant stream of lies and invective targeting us as the “foreign threat” damaging “stout, honest” england once more.
January 1st, 2010 at 12:58 pm
@MikeSA, Good point. Ancelotti seems worried too, he called out Arsene Wenger’s prediction that Chelsea would drop points. Calling him a “magician” if he thought he saw some vulnerability in Chelsea.
He also said that there are “no unbeatable teams” which just shows what he knows about Arsenal and the history of the EPL.
Allardyce is really dredging the bottom of the barrel with this piece of hypocrisy- His own club cannot afford top English talent- and if they do produce a great player-they will be relieved of them by the Manchester clubs. The fact is the EPL has never been a level playing field- it is an uncompetitive monopoly-only the billions of Arab and Russian oil money can get anywhere near counter balancing the monopolistic grip that United has on the EPL-they are the only ones who can afford the absurd wages and transfer costs of top English players. Tell me another English club apart from the 2 mentioned who could afford Rooney’s transfer fee and wages?
Buying foreign players is the only strategy Arsenal and Pompey can afford. It also offers better value because these players are generally better coached as youngsters.
Until boys in our youth teams as young as 11 yrs old stop playing meaningless 11-a-side football (on near as damnit full size pitches with full size goals) then English football will not progress.
One big shot anywhere on target at that level and the ball flies into the goal (as the keeper is too small to get anywhere near it). No wonder they are all encouraged to practice long balls and kick and rush from such an early age.
Revert to the smaller goals and team sizes as they do in France, focuson ball possession and skill and ‘voila’, England may be able to catch up once more.
WHY ARE THERE NO GOOD ENGLISH MANAGERS? Because none of them are intelligent enough nor schooled the right way. They were all brought up on long balls and kick and rush.
DAF – I’ve said exactly the same thing for years. My boy hit that age and his team scored loads of goals, by just hitting it over the keepers head. Seeing these little kids running about on a full size pitch, with full size goals, trying to master offside, makes you want to cry. Diamonds do come through, but a whole lot more could, if we played on smaller pitches up to 14/15 and concentrated on touch and technique. You could still tackle and have the passion, but learn to control the ball better as well. I lived in Spain for 2 years and the touch that the kids had at that age, was much better than comparable ages in England. The warmer weather helps, being to play outside more, but they dont run around on full size pitches, with full size goals, they’d think that was loco. They also play more on hard surfaces, rather than grass. Our kids are running around for most of the winter on water-logged pitches with six inches of mud, not being able to pass the ball. So for most of the season its booting the ball down the wing or long keeper punts and the forwards casing after it, not very creative. Until they change these things, we’ll never have that extra 5-10% of class that will enable us to win things.
Great comments by everyone, I especially enjoyed the surprising insight into youth football being played on full sized pitches. That’s just crazy.
You guys have put your fingers on the pulse of the problem. A combination of very bad managers,very poor academies and very poor backup system, plus of course bad mentality is at fault here. You could see that even the p(l)undits are bereft of sound ideas about how the game should be played and a dire knowledge of the laws of the game. But of course, their xenophobia will not let them acknowledge their real problem. Just look how bad our Referees are! If they all want to hide behind one finger, that’s fine by me because I know that my club will not listen to them.
[...] This post was Twitted by 7amkickoff [...]