Is English football an incurable disease? Part 5

Stop the rot

Until the recent South African World Cup proved otherwise, we still believed in England that, because our Premier League is the best in the world, the English national team was among the best in the world. There is a huge gulf between our top Premiership sides and the English national side. The former would beat the latter nine times out ten. We all know that today. I think that’s wrong. I want to see international football as the pre-eminent level in the game, not club football. So, I don’t care what statisticians and economists like Szymanski and Wenger say. The direction in which things seem to be heading is not inevitable. If it were, every top FA Premier League side will be fielding 11 Brazilians in five to ten years’ time and English players will be relegated to lower divisions. Who really wants that? For all the reasons I’ve given, therefore, I believe in cutting our top division down to size, so that we and all the world can see English football for what it truly is. And maybe we can start again and get better at it. A romantic view, eh? Well, that’s football.

We know where it all started to go wrong. The 1970s. It was the failure to understand that English football was going wrong during a period characterised first by the inability to qualify for successive World Cups in 1974 and 1978 (with traumatic experiences in the European Championships of 1972 and 1976) and second the sustained success of ‘English’ clubs in European competitions, that first showed us the rot. The same rot is now institutionalised in our so-called successful ‘English’ Premier League, where Welsh, Scottish and Irish players have been replaced by French, Spanish, Italian, German, Ghanaian, Ivorian, Dutch, Australian, American, Russian, you name it. With the result that an already shallow English player quality base has been so thinned, we now invariably rely in tournaments on one player to carry the hopes of a nation.

44 years of hurt

Today is the 44th anniversary of that day. We still believe that, despite this anomalous one-off, this complete home-turf, referee-assisted fluke, that England should be world beaters. Winning in 1966 seems to have instilled in the English football supporting mind a sense of just deserts, moral superiority, the right to keep winning, a sense of invincibility. Not just through winning, but by beating West Germany. It was a war thing. Britain was a country fuelled still by war films in the 50s and 60s. Boys’ comics were full of wartime heroes giving the Hun a good bashing. Winning the World Cup went with the territory. Captain Hurricane won the World Cup as much as Bobby Moore. There was little thought given to the fact that it had been won at home and with a great deal of luck and fortune. But that team was feted as heroes. And still is today. So, even more the shock, then, when the team went out at quarter final stage in the 1970 Mexico World Cup, having been 2-0 up to West Germany. This, it is reckoned, was where the rot set in. Certainly, the 1970s were where it all went wrong. And it was largely down to a misbelief that the success of English club sides in Europe meant that English players were good and, hence, the English team were world-beaters.

We’re clearly not world beaters. The statisticians tell us that history shows we’re lucky to qualify for two out of every three tournaments and, in those tournaments, we have a much lower chance than 20% of ever getting to a final. We should settle for quarter finals, a good result, as Sven knew.

Yet there is always a problem. Nobody seems to know what to do about the English footballing problem. Every tournament since 1966 has seen us caught out in one way or another. The latest excuses are unfamiliarity with the new FIFA ball and tired players. There’s truth in both. Sometimes, such problems are addressed after the horse has bolted, only for others to emerge next time around. In fact, the common factor is England’s inability in tournaments to show the form that the team shows in qualifying, or that the players show week in week out for their clubs. This is a problem that, due to entrenched money interests, is very difficult to address. So, instead of reducing the Premier League down to 16 clubs, we allow the free market its reign. It all conspires to mean that, with every tournament, we have to go through the charade of blaming the latest group of players, or the latest manager, looking to the next young golden generation – all of whom earn more and more and perform less and less.

It’s too late for anyone now playing for England at any level

We can’t just look to youth. Reports coming back from the performance of our Under-19 team at the current European Championships show that it’s already too late for the latest generation of young English players. They reached the semi-finals where they inevitably lost to Spain. That achievement masks a sad reality. These young players have been trained in the English way of pace and strength and giving the ball away. They are already lost to history.

Just read this review from an earlier match in this tournament. ‘Sub-standard kids play stupid football’, explains John Nicholson’s headline on the Football365 site. Describing the Under-19 performance against Austria: “Throughout, the Austrians consistently passed it through midfield with greater precision and purpose. England's defence relied on power and strength. Could they play the ball more than five yards? No. Was anyone comfortable on the ball? Who knows - they didn't keep it long enough to be able to tell. There were a lot of balls into the channels, lots of those annoying 30 yard chips from the front of the last third to the back of the first third which achieve nothing except to cede possession. There was sufficient long ball football to suggest it was still 1985 especially with the keeper aimlessly booting it long. It can't be difficult for a coach to tell a goalkeeper not to do that and surely even a retard could remember not to do it, so we must surmise that they have been coached into the notion that this is a good idea when, to anyone with half a brain, it's obviously a stupid waste of the ball. The English lads’ control was often sloppy; the midfield was all-running, box to box, relying on pace and power over technique. There was no sign of a player who could take someone on and beat them with skill. Against this opposition and indeed against most opposition this combination of a powerful engine room and big, broad-shouldered defence will be victorious, just as it is at full international level. Despite being constantly out-played on the deck, the sheer physicality against a smaller, lightweight side combined with some powerful shooting will win most games. However as a template for successful, tournament winning football it is palpably the same old same old which has failed England for years. This is but another generation that has been inculcated into The English Way. It looks like a form of the game coached and played by stupid people. It's not unfair to call this Stupid Football. Yet, I'm reluctant to believe they are all as stupid as their football suggests. It's just become entrenched as a tradition.”

Reading that really saddened me. How do we stop this conveyor belt that began moving in the 1950s and was out of control by the mid 70s and ‘entrenched’ today? Now that a few people have made loads of money from the Premier League over two decades, isn’t it time we ripped it up and started again for the benefit of all? What can we do to derail the destructive FA and recreate English football without having to throw the baby out with the bathwater?

The problem is institutional

Two bits of news came out this last month. First, that Alex Ferguson turned down the England manager job in 1996 and 1999, considering it a ‘poison chalice...a horrible job’. He also cited his Scottishness as preventing him from taking the job. Too right. When a top manager says such things, however, we have to say that something is wrong. But he’s a foreigner and the FA system suits his club and maybe two or three others, also managed and run by foreigners, so he can say and do what he likes. The second and related bit of news is FA member, Trevor Brooking, announcing that the FA is looking for a future series of English managers for the job, after the tenure of Fabio Capello. The FA needs to do more than this. It should be a given, but it’s only the icing on the cake.

The problem lies in the FA and its approach to the game. In early July 2010, after the South African debacle and the swift reconfirmation of Capello in the England manager role, former UK sports minister, Richard Caborn, came out and said that the FA is no longer fit for purpose. "I believe the governance of the game is not prepared to stand up to its responsibilities. The FA need to say we have to look at ourselves very seriously and we need to modernise ourselves. In Germany in 2000 there was a repositioning of the governance of German football. I think that has been to the benefit of German football, and we are seeing some of those results at the current World Cup."

Caborn cited the fact that many of the recommendations of the 2005 Burns Report had not been implemented. Conflicts of interest. Excessive influence of the Premier League. Lack of representation for important groups. "We have more reports and investigations then anyone else, and even though they are largely accepted they are never implemented. We can't just deal with the symptoms, we have to get to the root of the problem. English football and the Premier League have to come together to develop young English players."

Caborn also pointed to the 2007 recommendations of Richard Lewis to improve youth football and the academy system. While calling for the creation of a ‘parliament of football’ and three independent members on the FA board, Caborn knows that it goes deeper than just cultivating young players. Back in March, 2010, FA Chief Executive, Ian Watmore, left his role after less than a year in the job, citing disagreements with senior figures on the FA Board. Given that every board of directors has disagreements, these must have been significant. Then, of course, we had FA Chairman, Lord Triesman, having to step down after a Mail on Sunday entrapment case found him suggesting that the Spanish and Russians would collaborate illegally to win matches at the forthcoming World Cup. While he got it wrong (it was the Germans and Uruguayans), it seriously damaged England’s 2018 World Cup bid on the very weekend it was launched. While this signalled serious problems at the FA, it also highlighted the vindictive and destructive role of the English press in working against the interests of the national game, while claiming to be doing the very opposite.

What do you expect from a bunch of pirates?

In England, football is a form of emotional currency. It’s the start of many a business meeting. And, now that young women have embraced it, it is no longer the bête noire of male exclusivity it once was. However, as a currency, it no longer packs the purchasing punch it used to. By and large, the players who come to the Premiership are not the best in the world, just among the best in the world. They’re either very young or past their sell-by date, rarely in their prime. They’re all obviously here for the money. Why else would they come? Not for the quality, the English winter or the higher amount of games we play. As a currency, the English game needs devaluing. UEFA quite rightly resents that England has the pulling power to draw footballers away from their home audiences and is doing what it can to impose restrictions on squad numbers and introduce home-grown player quotas.

Clearly, the FA is a product of the historical English approach to business. Taking short cuts to success and success at any cost. English football is an English business disease. It’s a freemarket disaster that builds in success for the few and failure for the many. It’s the unregulated, ungovernable, unreformable arse-end of 400 years of English capitalism. We are the pirates of the world. If you do not have it at home take it from elsewhere. We used to call it Empire. And this new government wants to remind our children of our proper history about how the Empire once ruled the world. As well show them constant re-runs of Pirates Of The Caribbean. That’s about it. Our cultural insistence on continuing to be a world power by whatever means. If that means paying the earth to bribe footballers away from their own leagues to our league, creating dazzling teams of slightly tarnished glittering Galacticos, then so be it. It benefits the big clubs and money trickles down to the lesser ones. We get to see some good football. It’s not English football, but it is very lucrative. I wish the Government had the power to do to the FA what it's doing to state education and the health service. We'll have to look to Europe to rein us in. UEFA is trying to put a stop to a situation that, as with the 1970s, was leading to European finals dominated by ‘English’ teams that were not really ‘English’. (The only way they could manage it back then was by banning English clubs for reasons of hooliganism – it worked, but it led, after a moribund late 80s, to the creation of the Premier League as a means of ‘English’ resurgence.) Now, there is a limit on squad size with a set number of players in that squad required to be home-grown between the ages of 18 and 21. And the top club managers like Wenger, Redknapp, Mancini, Ancelotti and Ferguson are rebelling against it. Yet the fact that their own club owners signed up to it is a reflection of the belief that football should be, at its heart, home-grown. Call it emotional, call it what you will. But that’s what people want. Otherwise, in five to ten years’ time, the Premier League will contain no English players whatsoever and the likes of Arsene Wenger will still be able to say ‘because they’re not good enough to break through.’ There is an unbending logic towards every top side being full of the best players available from the world. Brazilians. So, why not just move Arsènale, Chelski and the Theatre of Prawns to Sao Paolo, Rio and Belo Horizonte? That way, the players won’t have that far to travel. And we can watch it all on Murderorc TV.

So, as interfering and troublesome as it will be, UEFA’s intervention on squad numbers and home quotas is good news for me. It’s the first thing I’ve heard in ages that attempts to halt the footballing disease in its tracks. There are certain globe-trotting managers who spread this ‘disease’, Mourinho being the prime example. Winning trophies at Chelsea and Inter Milan, he has done so with very few home grown players. Admittedly, the few he had at Chelsea did form the basis of the England ‘golden generation’ in South Africa. But he inherited them. At Inter Milan, however, he brought them their first Champions League in decades with a team comprised entirely of foreigners – a huge shock to the Italian football psyche. So, maybe these UEFA-enforced changes will help all nations produce a truer version of their own game. To begin with, however, it may well expose English football for the kick and rush it really is. But we’ve never really seen the even playing field. And I prefer the truth.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk