Young English Talent

Kinnear should be made Redondont.

 

Personally I think it is cowardly to shy away from what is necessary to achieve the desired outcome. We've been shown the way but are too afraid to step on the toes of the money men who are controlling our league, which to be frank, lacks soul and identity. So what? That's just crazy. The league is in England, it should be predominantly there to provide opportunity to English people! There should be a minimum 60% English talent, this is not a charity for the united nations. We are just a mish mash of nationalities who come looking for coin.

Why are we different to the likes of Spain, Germany, who saw as necessary to engage the top flight clubs to ensure the investment would be backed by opportunity? We're not. It is not rocket science to me and worldwide sports back it up. Increase the pool of players playing top level sport, drive up performance/ability levels. Its why countries like USA excel at athletics or any sport they take a serious enough interest in.

The difference is the Pl clubs have no respect for the FA because they are out of control power wise. They have previously threatened breakaways and fight the FA at every juncture. We even had the comical situation where one English club decided to sit out of one of its major competitions one year because it didn't suit their schedules It would be lovely to think the FA weren't spineless, could go to the clubs and say "look we need your help here with the national team. Can you provide opportunities for the coaches we are upskilling and give preference to the young English kids so we can increase the pool available" I just couldn't see them doing it.

Got no problem with foreigners coming here to work or earn a living in any capacity. Not at the expense of those born here though, and not at the expense of our national team suffering which it clearly has.

 

you completely understood my cryptic mesage, kinnear will be made redundant, pardew will be replaced with paul ince.

 

Again, don't see the basis for this assertion, though it's frequently made.

The effect of foreigners in the Prem and the Championship is to improve the standard of play over what it would be if it was English only. I think that at least has to be clear.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough English players in the Prem: it is that there are enough English players good enough to play in the Prem. The best English players play in the Prem and hone their skills to a level that they would not reach if they only had Englishmen to compete against.

Artificially increasing the number or English players in the Prem won't result in an increase in the number of good English football players. It will just result in a dilution of the level of play in the Prem.

Every player who you might want to consider selecting for the national team is currently playing professional football at the highest level he can manage. Lowering the standards of the league might increase the number of English players in that league but it won't make any player better than he is anyway.

The Germans and the Spanish have more local players in their top leagues because they have enough local players good enough to compete at that level: you're reversing cause and effect.

 

This is an assertion that was made in the early 90's when the mass influx first started. Yet there is no evidence to suggest this to be the case as we look at the results 20 years on. Indeed we are now further behind our international counterparts than we have ever been. The gap has also been steadily widening over that period. The experiment has failed quite clearly, with the only tangible result being we pay foreign players to come obscene amounts of money and pay over the odds for the decreasing pool of English players capable of playing at the top level. We have got nothing in return.

We have got lazy with the "buy cheap foreigners" attitude. Unfortunately urgent action is now required to arrest the slide. That means not only upgrading the skill level, but also changing the culture and attitude of clubs. You are correct the level will suffer for a short period and this is why it needs to be done in a responsible manner by steadily increasing the numbers insisted upon. But eventually if you do the grassroots work correctly, the rules won't even be necessary.

Part of the remit and point of domestic games in each and every country is to produce players for the national team. It is only England who have lost sight of this.

 

I can't really see how it can be contested that the standard of play in the Prem has been improved by the presence of foreign players. The best 11 of the average Prem team probably has about 8 - 10 full internationals. If it were English only, the figure would be 1.5 - 2. Unless you argue that the uncapped Englishmen wwho would make up the places of the missing foreign players are of equal or better quality to the full foreign internationals (which give the remainder what is said on this thread would be a very odd statement) then I think you have to accept that the quality of players in the Prem has been improved by the presence of foreign players.

The point I think you're making is that while the standard of the Prem might have been improved by foreign players, the standard of the England team has been harmed by them. You point to the fact that the England team has become weaker as compared to other national teams since 1990 as evidence of this.

Even if the England team had got weaker in the same period that more foreign players were hired by Prem clubs, this would be a long way from establishing cause and effect. The fact that other countries have far more UEFA qualified coaches training their youngsters, for example, would be a pretty good alternate explanation.

It is also far from clear that England has become weaker over the last 25 years. I wasn't watching the England team in the 80's and 90' but I understand that their status was more or less as follows. They generally qualified for major tournaments but occasionally didn't. When they got to a major tournament, they usually got out of the group but not much farther: going out at the quarter finals was about normal. They were ranked in the top 10 but never in any danger of being ranked first.

That's England now.

Identifying the cause of any given problem as "too many foreigners messing things up for the locals" has been popular at all times and in all places. It has a huge instinctive appeal. Because of its instinctive appeal, the arguments in its favour should be looked at particularly carefully. On this point, for me, the arguments are completely unconvincing.

 

...don't hold your breath... haha.

Cheers mate, good to be here.

 

The problem with English football is that it's insular and doesn't consider itself somehow connected to the real world.

Around 2m young people and ex-students are out of work. If we had a better guidance within education, a system that rewards sporting excellence rather than insists on academic-only effort, then things would change. People point at Spain or Brazil - these are kids with no hope, no education, no free healthcare and football becomes their life. When football is life or death in England, then we'll improve. Or when our education system - like Germany's - promotes excellence in sport with rewarding careers (not just the one-stop ticket of pro footballer), then we may see a change. But all we're doing in this country is spending millions on supporting the elite, not working out how we broaden the reach of our programs.

 

Pretty much agree with this (though, at least until a year or two ago, Spain had a pretty good education and free healthcare system - -I think it's more in the German model than the Brazilian).

Broaden grass roots and kids coaching. Stop thinking the world stops at the English channel. Everything else will take care of itself.

 

Essentially we agree on a lot of points, the key one we differ on (and I'd imagien will to our dying days ) is I think it is about coaching and opportunity, you believe it is about coaching only.

It is not only that for me though. As an Englishman, I believe I should be watching largely English players playing football or any other sport in the national divisions. Its not so much foreigners messing it up for the locals, its that it should be mainly English in my opinion. It is England afterall, and I don't see the need for it. Whereas I accept that some of the top level teams have players coming from abroad who are there on the basis of talent, they alo have squad fillers on the basis of foreign coaches who know them or because they appear to be the cheaper option. Some of it goes back to lack of production of good players, but I think it burying heads a little to think some of it is not down to lazy clubs and a culture we have created by selling out our football.

Whereas England results has not downgraded massively since the 80's, the performance levels and technical ability was far closer to other international sides than it is now. Certainly since Hoddle depart as coach and that last group of players he had, I think we have tailed off quite badly from our international colleagues. At times we just chase the ball around for 90mins!

 

Think we've talked this one to a stand still. Too bad, it's the most interesting discussion I've had this week.

 

Made for a good read lads