To be fair I think we have done a little towards this end. Not the complete job and it's hardly been visionary or ground breaking which is a shame with all the money. The facilities etc is first class. The coaching is improving. As the schalke coach noted there is a distinct lack of competitive edge and atmosphere to the youth scene however - which helps breed character. Everything is an arm round the shoulder now. The amount of foreign players is just plain wrong and has made our leagues lop sided and a poor back end for the youth systems.
Indeed and it could even be staggered. Start with 3-5 and build it slowly from there. Stop it at half. Or have it at half and say any starting eleven must contain 6 English players (excluding Welsh sides) The PL will fight this tooth and nail though because it affects their business model - they are more interested in money than the actual game. As soon as the FA relinquished that power our game was ****ed. Nobody cares about the national side anymore in places where it matters. For national side to be successful your top flight must be invested, your top clubs must be invested. Ours couldn't give a ****e.
Man Utd: Portuguese manager/American owners. Man City: Spanish manager/Arab owners. Chelsea: Italian manager/Russian owners. Arsenal: French manager/American-Russian owners. Liverpool: German manager/American owners. Tottenham: Portuguese manager/English owners. Hmmm. You may be on to something here.... That said, if everyone was English they still wouldn't give a ****e as people are only interested in making themselves rich no matter the nationality.
This whole country bar our Olympic team has become an international prostitute To be fair we have the perfect example of how to change your sporting fortunes in our Olympic team. Difference is the club and grass roots aren't bloated over inflated money hungry charlatans. And of course they have a governing body which is actually governing and directing their sport
have a look the England side before the Euros and consider the 3/4 sides from UK and I am including ROI, how many of the Welsh and 2 Irish sides would anyone of had in their England side bar Bale? be interesting to see the comments and be honest.
Capello did a lot of damage to perception in our region of England with his comments about not wanting to go up to the North East to watch players as it was too far.
It'll take us being humiliated by say the Faroe Islands or failing to qualify for major tournaments before anyone in power takes notice. Sadly, the powers that be at UEFA and FIFA are more than happy to give us easy qualifying groups meaning that it is very unlikely. You only have to take a look at two countries to see the damage that can be done by an over reliance on foreign players and the long term effects. Belgium and Germany. Both experienced a major decline in the 90's early 00's as their leagues were filled with non-nationals. Although both the Jupiler League and Bundesliga have their fair share of foreign players, both national FA's took steps to address the issues within their game. That was from youth to the professional game. Both are now reaping the benefits. Our short-sighted FA and PL however bury their heads in the sand. Academies aren't the answer. PL reserve sides mixing it with the EFL sides aren't the answer. The problems with our game begin at youth level, at school and the cancer is endemic throughout our entire game. To fix it: - Kids should be playing the game for fun and developing skills. This competitive playing to win ethos and emphasis on physical attributes needs to stop - Coaching needs to be improved. It is heavily under funded - Grass Roots - The lifeblood of our game. We have the best football pyramid system on the planet. There is talent in the lower/ non-leagues that goes undiscovered - Get rid of the PL academies and the loan system. - Limit the number of foreign players in PL squads. No more than 4-5 players from abroad in any squad and no more than 3 in any match day squad. - Have our top internationals regularly coming together to train and get used to playing together - The TV money from the PL should be filtering down into the football pyramid. It's billions ffs. A substantial portion of that should be spent on coaching, facilities, helping the smaller clubs to stay afloat and supporting our national game. It is criminal what is going on. We have some good players in this country. They reach a certain age and are given a lucrative contract and the incentive to keep on improving is gone. A kid at say 20 is given a contract worth something like £40,000 p/week is the death knell. Where is the motivation to improve and become a better player? It's no longer earned. It's viewed as an automatic right once they sign with a PL club. I used to love watching England. It used to rile me up and I felt brilliant when we won. Now, I don't give a damn either way. When people feel like that then you know the national side and national game is dying.
Gareth Bale, Joe Allen, Ashley Williams, Seamus Coleman off the top of my head would be the ones. Which is about right on ability I would say. On character that list would increase ten fold. Wales showed that with the right attitude you can over reach. We were probably a QF side on paper. We could have reached a SF or F if over reaching. It happens a lot. Normally though its one of the sides like Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain who manage to win it through a combo of ability, mental strength and pride in playing for their country.
I think this is a case of rose coloured memory. This is the team the Golden Generation (as it was being called at the time - - everyone recognised that it was an unusually talented group of players compared with England squads generally) fielded against Brazil in the 2002 World Cup. This was not a standard English team of the early Premiership era, it was exceptional. Seaman, Mills, Campbell, Ferdinand, Ashley Cole (Sheringham 79), Beckham, Scholes, Butt, Sinclair (Dyer 56), Owen (Vassell 79), Heskey. Some very decent players there - - the best we had had in years. But Danny Mills ? Trevor Sinclair ? Emile Heskey ? Keiron Dyer ? Darius Vassel ? Are we really saying they are better than their current equivalents ? I am not sure they would make the current squad let alone get their toes on the pitch. The fact that we had to field Sherringham when he was about 102 says a lot about the depth of talent at the time. Even players like Butt and Scholes, fully fledged members of the golden elite, were they noticeably better than Dier or Alli ? Their isn't a talent shortage. I do agree, though, that there is a backbone shortage. That is a very large problem but the first step is to recognise what the problem is and what it isn't.
Not at all rose coloured. I think I touched on the fact I am talking about the lack of genuine world class level players as well as characters. We just had more in every team across the period. I mean if you look at Euro 96, France 98, Euro 2000, WC 2002 - every one of those squads had world class players in - not every single one of course and there was average players like Vassell/Heskey/Sinclair/Dyer etc. Just look at the starting line ups from those mentioned: Euro 96 - Seaman, Neville, Pearce, Adams, Southgate, Ince, Gascoigne, Anderton, McManaman, Sheringham, Shearer Bench: Platt, Campbell, Howey, Stone, Flowers, Walker, Barmby, Neville, Redknapp, Fowler, L Ferdinand thats not just better, it wipes the bloody floor with our current bunch in every department. Ok Stone, Walker, Howey but they were no where near the first team. Seaman, Adams, Gascoigne, Ince, Platt, Shearer are genuine world class at the time. France 98 - Seaman, Neville, Adams, Campbell, Le Saux, Beckham, Ince, Anderton, Scholes, Shearer, Owen - Bench: Batty, Ferdinand, Keown, McManaman, Flowers, Martyn, Merson, Sheringham, Lee, Southgate, R Ferdinand - thats not just better, it wipes the bloody floor with our current bunch in every department. Seaman, Adams, Campbell, Ince, Beckham, Scholes, Owen are genuine world class at the time. Euro 2000 - Seaman, Neville, Neville, Adams, Campbell, Beckham, Scholes, Ince, McManaman, Shearer, Owen Bench: Keown, Southgate, Barry, Gerrard, Wise, Barmby, Phillips, Fowler, Martyn, Heskey, Wright - I'd argue Keegan failed to pick the best players and managed them very poorly. He took an unbalanced squad. Still though there is real class in certain areas. 2002 - Seaman, Mills, Campbell, Ferdinand, Ashley Cole (Sheringham 79), Beckham, Scholes, Butt, Sinclair (Dyer 56), Owen (Vassell 79), Heskey. So over a 6 year period with many changes to squads, we just produced more players who would be highly regarded anywhere. Even going back to the 1988 flops, that squad contained more world class level players despite an appalling performance level. 1986 the same. The 1990 squad the same. 92-94 is the last period I can recall something like this and we still had the likes of Beardsley, Gascoigne, Lineker Platt, Shearer, Ince, Adams. There is bloody 20 years covered among that lot Seriously we should be a lot more worried. It scares me how far backwards we have gone. We need to take action rather than sitting saying "ah we weren't that good then, we won nothing". A combination of a massive lack of character and also those 4 or 5 standout players at world level to enable you to compete technically etc is there slapping us round the chops. And that is just to compete - we are so bad now we can't even compete. People are blinded by good qualifying campaigns as the groups have diluted over the years. You maybe don't get the super duds you used to, but there are so many more average teams. Why has it happened? The PL is the only viable answer and the sooner this country wakes up to the obvious the better.
Also Scholes is not just noticeably better than Alli - he is light years ahead in quality. Scholes may have been badly used by England, but he is still the most talented player I think we have produced since Gascoigne. Its not even a discussion for me - and I think Alli is good. The talent shortage is massive mate. Its deluding ourselves that Alli is a Scholes which is the problem.
Key word in that - deluded. The issue isn't just number of foreigners (England were dogsh!t when we had NO foreigners in the league). For me, it's obviously a huge collection of factors, of course, ranging from society itself and the uprise of benefits to the whole culture of - for example - Nick Powell, who worked his a$$ off at Crewe, bought by Man U, thought he'd made it and just switched off. Then there's the loans, the vampirism of big clubs, the zero border policy of Europe and a complete lack of backbone at the FA (or extorting by the PL). For young kids, they're victims of agents, of greed, of clubs, of a picture so much bigger than them they're out of control. And they never get that hunger back. If you're doing it just for money you'll never reach the heights. The problem is everyone's head is turned by money and in the UK we have it so very (relatively) easy. Many foreigners, particular African kids, are literally playing for their lives, to get away from civil wars and gang brutality. That's quite a bit different than playing 'cos your blue collar dad wants you to, or wanting to drive a Range Rover. We're a really, really soft nation, a bunch of pansies, with very little of the same, real world problems a lot of these kids do have. That can't help. Add to that the agent vultures circling, the corporate greed of the "big" clubs. I mean, we all know the issues but worse than that we all know nothing will change. It's like suddenly expecting your bank to just forget about your mortgage.
Umm, are you suggesting that kids in Germany, Spain, Italy or France are growing up in tougher, meaner, play for your lives environments unaffected by stupid amounts of money ?
Well I guess all we can really compare is Scholes at 20.5 years versus Alli at 20.5 years. On that basis, I think you'd have to go in favour of Alli given that Scholes had made 10 premiership appearances and scored 3 goals as opposed to 36 and 10.
Played more for sure. Scholes was still a better player at 20.5 yrs than Alli is. I'd still look at the two at similar ages and if you offered me both, it wouldn't take me more than 5 seconds to make the call. Scholes was always a very classy footballer, even when he was playing second fiddle to Cantona (which is fair enough really). To be fair his breakthrough season at 94-95 which he'd have been around 20, saw him get 5 in 17 league appearances, or 7 in 25 overall. Stats are lovely but I am talking about how good a player is, stats will not tell you the whole story. Scholes just had a way better understanding of the game and his technique is light years ahead of Alli. I suspect Alli will never reach the level Scholes did in playing ability. It probably isn't possible now his junior education is done. He'll get better and is a good player, he could become a very good player. I'm not sure he has the natural ability to become a world class player though. Probably the ideal example which explains what I'm on about to be honest.
No doubt about it, the money is probably a bigger problem than the foreigners. I still think the back end for youth graduates is wrong and is saturated with foreign talent. If Belgium, Holland, Spain, Germany have all previously identified the problem, there simply must be something in it. Its not a straight fix by pinpointing this or that. Unfortunately we've got quite a few problems. Coaching, foreigner saturation, and of course mis-appropriation of funds going into the game. I am a big fan of salary caps for our game. I'm a massive fan of capping salary for young players. It might actually benefit us in two ways - they may go abroad in the search for more money which will also help their development. Then the foreigner saturation - we simply must use brexit to cap that too. Coaching we've made some progress but maybe not enough. Take the excess money flowing in that is saved on wages and force clubs to spend more elsewhere. Don't worry though none of this will happen. We'd lose sponsors, less money would come into the game because there would not be huge international interest, rich people would get hit in the pocket. That will be prevented. England will roll on getting gradually more and more average/non-descript.
It's the ideal example to highlight where we disagree. You (knowing what Scholes went on to achieve) say "Alli may have played more and scored more than Scholes at that age, as well as having acquitted himself adequately at international level whereas Scholes had no caps, but Scholes was just better. You could see it." I say you are letting your knowledge of Scholes at 30 influence your recollection of Scholes at 20 and are letting your (understandable) disgust with the English team colour your assessment generally. Not sure there is any way for either of us to take it forward, but it has been a pleasure.
No there isn't and it is all about opinions which is what these forums are all about. I've just never been a fan of judging players by stats. I think what you see with the naked eye is far more telling. I remember looking at Scholes when he burst on the scene thinking "jesus this kid is seriously gifted". I felt the same about Beckham and Batty - Rooney to a certain extent. Just great manipulators of a football. I think Alli is talented for sure and he has an eye for goal. But technically he just doesn't do it for me. There is culture about their game he just doesn't possess. Indeed most of our footballers now just don't. Wilshere is probably an example of someone who does possess it somewhat, but he has been lost to injury and lets be honest, the pitfalls of money/lack of dedication. It has little to do with what Scholes went on to achieve and more what I see with the eye. That is not the modern way I understand a we use stats more and more, but I think that is where we go wrong. We have undoubtedly in my eyes lost a feel/love for the game.
