I could provide different examples of team sports, but the point I was trying to make is that if you held every sport to the same standard as you do football, then you would have found the Olympics, Paralympics and every major sporting championships a thoroughly miserable affair for the past 2 decades. For example the sport I work in has a foreign Performance Director, but the coaches and the vast majority of those 'delivering' are British. Is this sport wrong for having a non British Performance Director? Even though we came away from Rio with a very healthy medal haul. I appreciate I am quite close to this (my job dependent on medal success) and that I am comparing with Olympic sports, but as I have said for years, Football can learn so much from other governing bodies, in fact in the circles I operate in it is widely acknowledged that football are still embarrassingly behind Olympic sports in their practices compared to Rowing, Cycling, Swimming, Judo, Hockey etc. etc. to the point that football is the laughing stock in the UK. And as for the FA changing their 'target' from winning the world cup to simply "doing well" that has more than irked me given the rigorous process we have to go through in setting performance targets. Football and this Utopian fantasy of how we should operate is so far removed from everything else happening and is proven to Simpy not work* *If the target is to have a successful national football team
I feel that a manager is as influential if not more than a star player and should have to meet the same criteria....anything less for me makes it a pointless exercise and we may as well just do away with the illusion of nation against nation.
Scowey - why should the notion of having a "National" team (players/managers) be a utopian fantasy? I thought the whole idea of having two nations compete against each other was simply that - a national competition. Because other sports have foreign managers/coaches. doesn't mean football has to go down that route. When I'm watching the world cup, I want to cheer on England, not English players managed by a Frenchman which are coached by a German. If our country is not good enough to win the world cup with English players/coaches/manager, then so be it...we'll have to train harder, coach better and educate our younger English players better - then hopefully one day we can win the world cup again.
The FA are always looking into the family ties of players to tempt them to play for England instead of another country that they qualify for. Other countries do it too. The Boateng lads play for two different countries. Klose and Podolski were first generation polish. Half the French team usually has african ties. Messi could've played for Spain. The list goes on.
Don't get me wrong, I would love for England to have an English manager and English staff, but working in performance sport where you are measured by success, getting the best staff and providing the best possible environment for athletes to develop is the only way to be successful. I get why people go 'native' but whilst we are not developing the personnel to match the quality of the athletes, why accept 2nd best? We will simply continue to get the same outcome and those that clamor for an English manager are then one of the first to bemoan how incompetent they are. The examples of Rowing, Cycling etc. are worth looking at as they have previously employed foreign coaches to deliver technical elements where there are gaps in the skill set of the British coaching workforce, but have then fully utilised these coaches to upskill and develop British coaches to step up into more prominent roles, all for the long term benefit of the sport in Britain. Having taken what the best in the world do but then improved and adapted it with British staff to be a World leading system that is the envy of the rest of the world. And I ask the question again, do you hold every other sport to the same standard as football as it would be difficult to follow any of our national teams or Olympic successes if you did
Are you implying that British athletes have been taking banned substances? Or just that there is a problem in the world of sport?
I don't hold other sports in the same regard as football....because I don't enjoy other sports as much I mostly dip in and out of other sports but football is in the blood so to speak........also as I've said in individual sports such as golf/tennis/snooker I don't really see nationality has any importance. If we accept that it's okay to have non English managers why can't we have non English players playing for England?
Could we not go the same route as schoolboy football? Any boy at an English school can represent England at schoolboy level, as in Ryan Giggs played for England schoolboys, but at senior level he only qualified for Wales!
No just implying that it would get the best out of our teams, as it's all about winning and performance isn't it? I'm with weighty, whilst I'll still support England and GB with foreign managers I don't understand the point in it. Surely the point in national competition is that you use the resources you have available from that nation!!
Weighty I cannot for one second believe you didn't watch a single minute of three England campaigns under Sven at tournaments and the same with Capello at South Africa. Seriously!? As for Southgate after tonight, bloody hopeless.
I'm not sure if the previous poster advocates foreign managers or not. The ones quoted didn't show any improvement from what I saw. I just don't get the argument. Either you accept it's a nation vs nation competition, and have English managers whether they are any good or not because that's what the competition is all about (as it was conceived), or you allow foreigners and negate the very concept of said competition.
If the future of the England football team rests with this clown then we are in more trouble than I thought! The Euros campaign in the Summer marked the nadir of English football as far as I'm concerned. The cupboard is now bare and bereft of any English talent to take the job apart from Eddie Howe perhaps but he will be to manage Arsenal next season.
My 'views' are just examples of what has taken Team GB from the low point of Atlanta 96 to the highs of London & now Rio. A world class system. I think it's just proof that those who only follow football have little perception of what "Performance" means