Is English football an incurable disease? Final Part

England will be the first to go

Modern English footballing history started with the USA and Hungary, so it’s fitting that I pen my final piece on England’s football sickness on the morning of a friendly with Hungary, while thinking about what I have to say about a future with America.

Everything is unravelling now. It’s a far from meaningless friendly. For the media is hunting for Capello’s scalp early on this season and this gives them an opportunity. What do they have to do to get him out? Encourage fans at the Community Shield to boo England players? Suggest that Ashley Cole spurned him by refusing to shake his hand at the end? Insist that Capello’s effectively lost the dressing room by constantly repeating how he said that England played with fear at the World Cup? Make him look a chump when players of the calibre of Wes Brown and Paul Robinson can thumb their nose at England when called up? Put forward Irishman, Martin O’Neill as the next England manager, one day after resigning from Aston Villa? Yes, all these things. And more. After all, Capello can and should take it. That’s why we pay him £6million a year.

Although several players have done a Robinson and Brown over the course of the years ahead of their time, notably Alan Shearer and Paul Scholes, the timing of this latest snub just adds to the criticism of the way both Capello and the FA do things. While it does show a lack of respect for players in the modern world, it also reveals the priorities of players – they all cite longevity in playing for their clubs as the reason for international ‘retirement’. Who will be the first player to say, in the interest of prolonging my international career, I’ve asked my club to play me less?

Enough of wishful thinking. Only young upcoming players now need to play for England. So, actually, the real question will be this. How long before Wayne Rooney decides that enough is enough and calls it quits at international level? I give him till he’s 26.

Whose side are the media on?

Most of this stuff takes place in the media. How else would we mortals ever learn about it? For some time, it has felt like it is only our tabloid media that sustains the myth of the national team: (a) that we actually have one and (b) that it is capable of winning anything. The clubs and players long ago gave up on the illusion. Some people don’t even bother to hide it. Last week, Sir Alex Ferguson went on a rant about international football and how there hasn’t been a decent World Cup since 1986. This came after Harry Redknapp’s hypocritical condemnation of the Hungary friendly fixture, just three days before the Premiership season starts. It wasn’t so long ago that he was saying there should be 8 Spurs players in the England World Cup squad. Before they qualified for the Champions League and somebody told him about Spurs’ draining pre-season shirt-selling tour of the USA, that is. Was it only a few weeks ago that England’s so-called best hope for a home-grown national team manager was saying that fans didn’t care whether Saddam Hussein owned their club? If Redknapp is the future for English football, then there isn’t one.

Admittedly, it’s not just England. Bayern Munich have just refused to let Franck Ribery attend a World Cup inquest by the French FA, saying they do not have to release players for such a matter. Pre-season training is more important. It isn’t that Bayern are wrong. Or Robinson is wrong. Or Ferguson is wrong. Or Redknapp is an idiot. It’s that these people are individually adding to a collective drive, voiced through a willing media, to discredit international football in the effort to pursue global club football. It’s the logical move from the establishment of the FA Premier League, nearly two decades on. There is more money to be made. At least three of the top English club sides pre-seasoned in the USA this summer (I cannot and will not call the game ‘soccer’). That can’t be a coincidence. These club sides are quite happy to use international tournaments these days as a TV shop window, a kind of lure for a global audience. But their idea is to replace international team football with global club football once and for all. TV media is driving this. Print media, at least in the UK, seems to be on the verge of accepting it at last and moving over to the other side. It is committed to constant hounding of the England team, its managers and players and that part of the FA that governs the national set up. The FA is torn in two and doesn’t know how to respond. In terms of the hurricane that is coming, it knows it is powerless to intervene.

Sweet FA

On 21 April 2010, The FA Premier League was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category in recognition of its outstanding contribution to international trade and the value it brings to English football and the UK’s broadcasting industry!!!

Yet last week, Richard Scudamore, chief exec of the FA Premier League, felt bound to defend the Premier League while giving ground on its role in taking some blame for England’s dismal showing in the World Cup. The media didn’t really know how to report this. “What every England fan should expect is that the players we do produce are world class. They should be able to give world class performances at these tournaments - that's our focus,” said Scudamore, attempting to palliate those who point to the decreasing lack of opportunity for English players in our top division. It’s a brazen faced lie. Either that, or, like Crapello, he’s just somebody who’s paid enough to live with an impossible duality – the success of English club sides and a successful England team.

The Premier League is run by the FA. The England national team is run by the FA. Perhaps the clue to the dilemma with English football is in the two letters at the end of the last two sentences. Isn’t the FA responsible for the development of football in this country from top to bottom? The problem is clearly how you define the ‘top’. Some people including me think it should be the England national team. Others think it should be the clubs. In practice, it is currently the clubs. But this failure to agree what the ‘top’ should be, as opposed to what it is currently, prevents us doing what needs to be done at the bottom. Because the ‘bottom’ looks different, depending from which ‘top’ position you happen to be looking down from.

But all this is one huge red herring, to distract your attention from what’s ahead on the big clubs’ agendas – their own suicide – but more of that at the end. Add all this up and it feels like the speeding up of the end for international football. In the sense that, the players already feel they play international football, but at a club level. Why should they have to do it on behalf of their nations as well?! In the Community Shield, Rooney supplied a class pass to set up the first goal. Just like he did all through last season for his club side. Shame about the insignificant tournament in between. The man epitomises the end of English international football. But he is not responsible for the creation of the venal set of knuckle-dragging, under-performing unconscientious objectors who no longer want to wear three lions on their shirt because they see more honour in filling their already over-stuffed bank accounts than they do in representing their country. Let’s raise statues to the greedy or disingenuous or self-serving or plain deluded men who, in creating the breakaway FA Premier League and handing TV rights to Brit-hating foreigners, have ensured that the international game will soon founder and be replaced by global soccer, American style...Greg Dyke, David Dein, Alan Sugar, Rupert Murdoch, the G14 clubs and their owners and managers with the much lauded Arsene Wenger at the forefront (but don’t Arsenal play such wonderful football?! – will you be saying that when they’re the Arsenal Aardvarks playing out of Boston, Massachusetts?).

English football – in memoriam or per ardua ad astra?

When I set out on this journey, I was more optimistic about a possible future for England at international level. I’m now tending to believe that spoilt working class brats like Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney, John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand and his ilk are not just aberrations, the first real product of the FA Premier League, but more like the norm. In them, we’re just seeing the vanguard. In which case, I’d rather shove them off onto the global club football stage and watch football closer to home. As Platini says, if you’re sponsored by Coca Cola, why not just call yourself Coca Cola and go off and play wherever Coca Cola can get you the best TV rights? But while there’s still life in this international dream, I’m going to give it space. And raise a last cry, as England take on Hungary this evening.

LISTEN, WHAT I’M SAYING IS THIS: AS A RESULT OF THIS EXHAUSTIVE, DECADES-LONG INVESTIGATION, I CAN CONCLUDE THAT, WHEN IT COMES TO FOOTBALL, THE ENGLISH FOOTBALL DISEASE IS VERY SEVERE BUT IT’S NOT LIFE THREATENING. I’VE COME VERY CLOSE TO SAYING THAT THE ENGLISH WAY OF STUPID FOOTBALL IS INNATE. WHAT I REALLY MEAN TO SAY THAT IT’S THE ENGLISH WAY OF EXPLOITING THE WORLD FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES THAT IS STUPID. FOOTBALL IS JUST PART OF THIS.

THE ENGLISH WAY HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN TO EXPLOIT AND IMPORT WHATEVER IT NEEDED TO, RATHER THAN TAKE THE TIME TO GROW IT AT HOME. THE ONLY WAY TO CURE THIS IS TO STOP AND DO IT DIFFERENTLY. BUT WHY CURE WHAT’S LUCRATIVE? IT’S MUCH EASIER TO CONTINUE WITH THE FAILURE THAT SUITS A VERY FEW PEOPLE MOST OF THE TIME AND DISAPPOINTS THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ALL THE TIME. IT’S OK FOR A BUNCH OF DISINGENUOUS STATISTICIANS AND NUMBER-CRUNCHERS TO SAY THAT THE BIG FOUR IS THE WAY IT IS AND THAT MEANS THIS IS THE WAY IT’S GOING. OK, FOR NOW, WE’RE STUCK WITH CHELSKI, ARSENALE AND THE THEATRE OF PRAWNS. I’D BE HAPPY FOR THIS LOT TO MOVE OUT TO BRAZIL, IN ADVANCE OF THE NEXT WORLD CUP, TOMORROW. ALL THIS IS TEMPORAL, TRANSIENT. BUT ONE THING LIVES ON. THE DREAM OF THE BEST AGAINST THE BEST.

I THINK THAT WHETHER FIFA AWARD ENGLAND THE 2018 WORLD CUP IS NOW IRRELEVANT. THERE MAY NOT EVEN BE A 2018 WORLD CUP. A MASSIVE LOST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NATION, YES. A HUGE BLOW TO OUR IDENTITY, CERTAINLY. YET THE CLUBS WOULD RUB THEIR HANDS WITH GLEE AND SEE IT AS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A CHANGE AS CATACLYSMIC AS THE BREAKAWAY FA PREMIER LEAGUE.

IT’S PROBABLY TOO MUCH TO HOPE THAT THIS CHANGE WOULD BE SOMETHING POSITIVE, THAT ENABLES INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL TO SIT ALONGSIDE AND COMPLEMENT CLUB FOOTBALL. SOMETHING THAT ENABLES OUR LOT TO PIT THEIR WITS AGAINST THEIR LOT. AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. FOR THE DREAM WE ALL DREAM OF. I DREAM OF.

The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

Where’s it all going? In case you haven’t noticed...America. While you’ve been distracted by the part-time circuses of Russian billionaires like Abramovich and Middle Eastern oil sheiks, the Americans have been taking over your football clubs and turning them into American business machines. Manchester United. Liverpool. Arsenal. Aston Villa. None of these clubs any longer spends ridiculous sums of money on buying players. They allow the playboy billionaires to pay ridiculous sums like £30 million for the likes of James ‘concrete boots’ Milner. They are sellers, not buyers. The American owners want their return on investment. No sooner than O’Neill is gone from Villa than American Bob Bradley is installed as favourite to take over. An American manager in the English top flight? Whoda thought it?

Make no mistake. Despite calling their glorified game of rounders the World Series, the Americans have finally realised that they do not have a universal, global game of their own. Their version of football is a sealed unit. No ins or outs. It’s washed up and there’s no more money in it. These businessmen have seen the emotional grip proper football has over the rest of the world. And they don’t just want some of it, they want all of it. They’ve learned something from the English. If you can’t be it, buy it (the Americans didn’t invent capitalism, the English did; the Americans just perfected it).

So, forget the transition to a European League. Poor old Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are helpless in the face of the wave of change. History will see them as men who resisted the inevitable: the Americanisation of football. Our big clubs are tired of regulatory UEFA practices and will be playing in America before you can remember that your game used to be called football. Will the rules be changed? You betcha. Are you happy with that? Whaddya mean ya never saw it coming? Ya bought Sky TV. Ya let it happen. Weren’t you listening to Golden Balls? Didya think he was in California for his health?

For those of us who are awake, there is a choice: DC United or FC United. After all, it’s our game, not theirs. We could always start again. Football. English rules.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk