I can understand what the FA are trying to do, but I think they're going about it the wrong way. The country needs more qualified coaches and more laypeople to show an interest. There aren't many incentives at the moment and the behaviour of players at all levels puts many potential contributors off. Relying on bigger clubs to do the donkey work is never going to be effective, as they don't care and will look for loopholes. Removing the protections that smaller clubs had from having their youth players poached was utterly counter-productive. Restore those, control the players and club officials and the standard will increase.
The biggest mistake The FA are making in regards to training qualified coaches is they're compensating any recently-retired player who was making was making a four/five/six-figure salary a few months prior the cost of taking their coaching badges, yet any non-professional footballer has to pay the full whack (£150 for level one, £300 for level two...and I can't find a definite answer about what level three costs) WSC ran an article a few years ago that mentioned another stumbling block for prospective coaches, namely the issue that in order to take your level three badge you have to be employed as a coach, rather than be some punter off the street - yet how can any punter off the street get a job as a coach at any club if they don't have their level three badges? Again, it's easier for ex-pros as their club can keep them on, as we're doing with Ledders and Friedel.
I suspect that this is entirely intentional. Jobs for the boys? What other reason could there be for it? I can't think of any. I wonder what the definition is for being employed as a coach? I might start up a business "employing" potential coaches... for a fee.
I remember Roo spoke about the issues with coaching , the money involved for the general guy (or girl) who has to pay the full price, haven't seen him about posting but I know from when I used to listen to the 606 phone-in, whenever this issue was raised, you would get irate callers about the lack of attention to grass root football and the lack of quality coaches in the game.
One solution is to use some of the windfall clubs got from the new deal to make coaching badges free or cheap for suitably serious and/or qualified members of the public. Intelligently injecting more money into youth programs is a much better idea than fiddling around with home grown quotas, if the idea is to increase the quality of young English players, I think.
