Hang on just a cotton picking minute here - what the hell happened after we opened our "Centre of Excellence" which was supposedly designed to improve the quality of football? Does England hold the world record for apathy and greed when it comes to our national sport or is it just my wild imagination running rings around common sense? A national disgrace on all levels which will never be fixed until reality checks in, but hang on again haven't we all heard the same wasted rhetoric coming from somewhere else closer to home? Go figure!
What happened? The same as before. England still has less qualified coaches v players than Belgium, France , Germany, Netherlands, Spain ... And Iceland. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ise-euro-2016-gylfi-sigurdsson-lars-lagerback Iceland set up an open, hugely popular training scheme. Currently this nation of 335,000 has around 600 qualified coaches, 400 with Uefa B licences, or one per 825 people. To put this into context, in England this number falls to one per 11,000. England has a football development strategy at its grass roots - The four corners, however it is not implemented thoroughly. England is still in the stone age v Germany and Spain.
There are also accusations coming from Jamie Carragher that the 'Academy Generation' are too soft. A professional football culture that caters to every whim of the country's leading young players has failed, argues former England defender Carragher, to instil the necessary characteristics and leadership necessary to overcome adversity on the pitch. Men with both brains and brawn used to play this game....
Presumably because they actually work and don't just churn out mindless overrated robots, but actually produce multiple World Cup and European Championship winning sides ? Fair play to them.
Is there anyone with a brain left that actually knows how to run a football programme that cares enough to fix the problems? Here would be my criteria to try and fix the problems. 1. Get all the foreign stuff, especially money, out of our game. 2. Bring salaries to the age of reality. 3. Restrict the number of offshore players. 4. Stop the media, especially social media, trying to run the show. 5. Wake up and smell the roses. Thankfully I'm old enough not to care much anymore and yet I want that feel good sensation of my day at Wembley in 1966 to return but realistically I know it never will - such a shame.
I don't care about England any more either Mike. It's a shame, but the whole dodgy set up from the out-moded and unfit for purpose FA, to the clueless wimps that are modern England footballers sticks in my craw, and I can't bring myself to be watching all of the posturing and pretence after Beckham and co terminally ruined the national illusion for me under Sven. Quarterback my arse. 1) Too late. This should have done it in the 80's when the hoardes of cheap foreigners started arriving in our game. Exactly the same happened in Speedway and England have suffered in the sport the same way too. 2) Too late again I'm afraid. There should have been wages caps introduced decades ago when transfer fees hit stupid and unsustainable amounts, and where very average players started to become millionaires. 3) That would call for common sense. I'm afraid the FA sold theirs to the highest bidder/sponsor. 4) The media in this country, especially on the red tops are a total disgrace and should be banned or censored for some of the things they've done over the years. But it seems no-one has the balls, or the will to stop them. 5) They'd rather smell the aroma of a sack full of newly printed £50 notes. From this spectators point of view that's all that the modern England players appear to be interested in. I watched the recent Alfies Boys documentary on the real heroes that won us the World Cup. It brings a lump to the throat to fully understand and comprehend the difference in the game between then and now. The players in the England squad at the time didn't live in mansions, some of them didn't even own a car !! And so used to catch local buses to their home league matches and chat to the fans on the way. Compare this to even someone like Nicky Maynard, who frankly hasn't ever done much and never will He has won nothing of note in the game, but I'll wager he has made an awful lot of money out of it and has driven some the best cars known to man. Every England player involved in the latest humiliation should be made to watch it and then give 90% of their unwarranted salaries and endorsements to charity. They'd still earn more than the rest of us on here combined. Rant over.....
