Is English Football an incurable disease? Part 1

The beautiful dream

Football starts with your first kick as a three year-old and ends with your winning goal in the World Cup Final. Or so the beautiful dream goes. But you could see it come to life in the eyes of Iniesta, four minutes from the end of extra time in Johannesburg. Something so rare, but so real.

Football is not tennis, golf or motor racing. It's more akin to rugby or cricket. It's a team game. But, actually, football is football. I even have to agree with Sepp Bellend Blatter on that one. I grew up believing that, with football, the national team is the highest a player can aspire to. The first live game I ever saw on TV was the 1966 World Cup Final. Although it's all been downhill from there, I'm no traditionalist. I'm the first to say that the world has changed and to welcome much of it. However, with football, I still believe there is a hierarchy to the performance which culminates in achievement at national, and therefore international, level. The best of our kind against the best of theirs. The joy of Iniesta and the tears of Casillas tell me they agree.

So, why do I not feel that this belief exists in the hearts of the few very special and very rare individuals who get to play for the England football team at international tournaments? Why do I believe that it is their clubs, nay, themselves, that come first? And what has happened to make it so? In football, England is the sick man of the world. I really don't care about how the French became farcical, the Dutch became dirty or the Spanish became sustainable. Here, after England's worst ever performance at any World Cup Finals, I find myself trying to get to the bottom of the failure of the English national football team as a historical, cultural, institutional problem. I suspect it is an incurable disease. But I need to know.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk