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institutionalised in our so-called successful ‘English’ Premier League, where Welsh, Scottish and Irish players have been replaced by French, Spanish, Italian, German, Ghanaian, Ivorian, Dutch, Australian, American, Russian, you name it.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

Is English football an incurable disease? Part 4

Kick and Rush – they played for Liverpool, didn’t they?

What happened in the 1970s? I should know. I was there. Did we even recognise that what we were watching was Kick and Rush? One thing’s for sure. It was in the 70s that things went wrong. A series of interconnected and often contradictory factors made Kick and Rush an unseen development and the English Way we know today. It’s a long story, but one worth reading that you won’t have read elsewhere, because journalists and football writers are as much part of the sick English footballing system as the players, clubs and national set-up.

At its base was that deadly combination of media over-expectation and institutional incompetence that saw the FA bungle the managership of the England team. The England team in the 70s never really recovered from the chaos that ensued when Ramsey and his captain, Bobby Moore, were sacked for failing to qualify England for the 1974 World Cup and nobody could be found to take over. The public and the press clamoured for Brian Clough, but this team-building, working class firebrand was too plain-speaking for the suits at Lancaster Gate. The most successful club manager of the decade, Don Revie, asked for the job and got it, only to leave England in the lurch for a great money offer in the Middle East after three years. During this painful period, England failed to qualify for the final stages of tournaments in 1974, 1976 and 1978. Then put up very poor showings in the European Championship tournaments in 1980 and the World Cup in 1982.

Going, going, gone

The English malaise alluded to by Franz Beckenbauer has to have entered the English national game some time after the 1966 and 1970 World Cups, both of which featured England v West Germany, including Beckenbauer himself. Two World Cups in which England played good football in a series of closely fought games. Watch these games and you notice the slow pace, ball being passed to feet. Losing 3-2 to West Germany in Leon, Mexico, on 14 June 1970 after being 2-0 up was the first blow. Other nations had caught up with Sir Alf Ramsey’s ‘wingless wonder’ 4-4-2 formation. In 1972, England was knocked out of the European Championships at the quarter final stage, losing home and away to a West Germany run by a brilliant midfielder with size 14 feet, Günther Netzer. Beckenbauer was still German captain. The English national game changed, even went backwards, from this traumatic moment on.

In October 1973, England failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup, knocked out by a lowly, unfancied Poland, who did, however, go on to finish 3rd in 1974, a World Cup which saw the advent of Holland’s ‘total football’, featuring Johann Cruyff, still talked about today. And won by West Germany, who ‘found a way to win’, as they still do today. By the time he lifted the World Cup himself in 1974, Beckenbauer had surely already noticed the difference in English football. The recriminations and the rot set in here. From here on, England found a way to lose and began to believe in the ill-luck which has a place in the inquest into every major defeat today.

The Revie Plan

Yet, in 1974, when Revie took on the England managership, it wasn’t as if there was a sense of panic with English international football. As today, great things were expected of the nucleus of top players from our leading teams – Leeds, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Ipswich Town – who were used to winning domestic and European trophies. But things did get worse over the next three years, as England failed to reach the final stages of the 1976 European Championships, although knocked out by the eventual winners, Czechoslovakia.

Under Revie, a certain lack of confidence pervaded the team. Unlike at Leeds, it was never a settled team, never the same twice, except for the last two matches of his reign. But, then, in the England role, Revie found that he had to pick teams of players most of whom would not have made his own club reserve side. He tried about 50 players and found most wanting. This seems to have been quite a shock to him. A man with great club credentials, but untried in the international arena (but aren’t they all?) Perhaps he was the first England manager to show that managing a country is far more difficult than managing a club. You seem to have far more players at your disposal, but where is the real quality and what is the best combination? And why are they always injured when you need them most? Certainly, everyone since Revie has struggled with the same problems. All sorts of factors are held up, from diet to tiredness to poor motivation. But, in the end, maybe the main problem is Englishness.

Just not good enough

When England failed to qualify for the finals of their third tournament in a row, the 1978 World Cup, best player Kevin Keegan refused to put the blame at Don Revie’s door. Unlike biased hacks ever since, who parrot the same hackneyed stories from clogger players and bullying managers who resented Revie’s club success. Keegan actually admitted that the available English players were just not good enough. Quality was just not there. And there you have it. Those players that were not good enough had failings which were actually documented by Don Revie’s notorious dossiers of the time. All our top players had weaknesses. Unlike Revie’s British team at Leeds, very few English players could hold the ball, last for 90 minutes, pass with both feet, use positional sense, fit into a different system. Forget your Capello Index from 2010, the evidence was there in writing as far back as 1977. Very few people could see it. And certainly not the journalists who were paid to.

From this time, with the odd exception, England games became frustrating equations of unrealistic expectation over underlying fear, as nobody understood why Revie was scouring around. The cupboard was bare and, inexperienced and ineffective, England moved into a frenzied, impatient way of playing. By and large, it reflected the lower quality of players who relied at club level on the excellence of their British team colleagues to make them look good. As the English players at our top clubs so obviously do today. Many commentators on the game do not accept this. But they are blinkered, too close to it and have every incentive to hang on to a failing system.

Leeds were the vanguard

The frustrating fact for English national football was that, even though they contained some English players, the top English club sides of the mid to late 70s weren’t playing Kick and Rush. Any more than Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal play it today. English club sides had been trying to raise their game to take on the Europeans since the early 1960s. Odd one-season sides like Spurs, West Ham, Newcastle, Arsenal and Chelsea managed to win one European trophy before disappearing. (As I’ve said, Manchester United’s 1968 Wembley European Cup win was as much of an anomaly as England’s 1966 Wembley World Cup win.) In many ways, Leeds United was the first modern, truly international English club side, based on the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach. Slow build-up, based on defence, neat passing, then quick around the box. Some hard knocks and a bit of referee intimidation thrown in. They put two fingers up to the English establishment and were vilified for it. But, overall, it was sheer, hard-nosed consistency that kept this club up there among Europe’s best at a time when there was no consistency in English football.

It was the English national football team that played the price for this rare consistency in Leeds United and Liverpool. The two top English club sides of the day had so perfected the British team balance in the sides they put out that there simply was a dearth of quality of English talent around. All the best roles in the Leeds team had gone to the British players. The Leeds side cheated out of the 1975 European Cup Final featured 4 Englishmen, 5 Scots, a Welshman and an Irishman. Following on with this British balance, Liverpool won the first of several European Cups in 1977, as did several English clubs picking up the trophy every year up to and including 1981. Clearly, for the media experts of the time, there could be nothing wrong with the English game at all. Nationally, it had to be Revie’s fault. He was the first of England’s fall-guy managers. Had nobody English read the signs? Beckenbauer had.

Liverpool were the tipping point

If Leeds led it, Liverpool perfected it. Is it just a coincidence that when Liverpool became the first English club to step out of the pack and dominate, first in England, then in Europe, English football in general took its nosedive into Kick and Rush? Between 1973 and 1990, Liverpool won the old First Division 11 times and finished second 6 times. They won the FA Cup 3 times, the League Cup 4 times. In Europe, they won the European Cup 4 times and the UEFA cup once. That’s 23 trophies in 18 seasons. But what’s this got to do with anything? Much the same happens in Spain. But, by the time Liverpool got to 1985, as the most dominant English club side of all time, however, there were hardly any English players in the team at all. And the reason for this was that Liverpool could not find those quality English players to sustain this success. English players just weren’t good enough. And the pursuit of continued success was all that mattered. Ron Greenwood, the England manager who replaced Don Revie, proved this. Early on, egged on by the media, he tried to base his England team around the successful English Liverpool players, but it just didn’t work. It baffled Greenwood and everyone else. Except Franz.

We cannot blame either Leeds United or Liverpool for English national failure. Both did what it took to win. By and large, that meant only selecting English players who were good enough. By 1977, they were few and far between. After decades of British players in English teams, the English national team was full of second raters. Our only world-class player of that period, Kevin Keegan, actually left European Champions, Liverpool, in 1977 because he felt he could improve by playing abroad among foreign players. He did and became European Footballer Of the Year while at Hamburg in 1978 and 1979.

Not even Keegan could help Ron Greenwood at the 1982 World Cup. England’s ineffectual, outmoded and utterly toothless and guileless way of playing was shown up for what it was, when they went out of the mini-league middle section of the tournament without scoring or conceding a goal against Spain and Germany. England’s talisman and only world class player made a 20-minute appearance at the end of the Spain game and missed a sitter. These were to be his only 20 minutes in a World Cup finals. Much expectation had been heaped upon his shoulders before the tournament. He was selected despite being injured and unfit. The end of a team-game approach, this one-man fixation would reflect English hopes at such tournaments for decades to come. England had forgotten that football was a team game.

A tale of the unaccepted

By the mid 70s, then, the English football system had reached critical mass. It actually meant that the whole generation of English footballers born between 1950 and 1955 just had poor ball skills and an unintelligent approach to the game. In comparison to their better, more skilful and creative Scottish, Welsh and Irish team mates. Nobody has ever voiced this. It may sound astonishing, but it’s true. And it’s the same story today. Just replace Scottish, Welsh and Irish with Dutch, Ivorian and South Korean. English players in top club sides are made to look good and carried by the other, foreign players.

England used to be known for the best goalkeepers in the world. Banks, Shilton, Clemence, Parkes, Corrigan. Only one could play at any one time. Today, none of our top teams has English goalkeepers. So, what do we expect? Look at midfield, where the game is won and lost today. Finally, after generations of battling Scottish and Welsh midfielders had filled the key positions of our top sides, we had nobody of quality to take up such positions. Fabregas cannot even get into the Spanish side. Today, there is no competition for English players in the national team. They know they cannot be dropped by the manager even if they do not play well. The manager even has to include players out of position and put players alongside each other who do not work well together.

70s drunk, 80s hungover

In the 60s England was at the party. But the 70s were over by the time England woke up. It was a world dominated by powers like Germany, Holland, Italy and Argentina. England had joined Brazil, Spain and Hungary in the ranks of footballing nations who had become tired and emotional.

While the 80s were to bring their own distractions and miseries, from economic depression to violence, death and destruction, including the banning of English participation in Europe, that brought our game to its knees, a spirited performance by a backs-to-the-wall England manager and his team at the 1990 World Cup promised a revival. After a decade of decline, the powers that be pounced on this uplift to launch the FA Premier League in 1992. While it changed the entire footballing world forever, not just that in England, and benefitted a relatively small group of managers and players, the Premier League only served to make a few clubs even richer and embed the same old problems deeper in the English game that are so blatantly obvious and seemingly insoluble today.

But, of course, hooliganism aside, there had been no real English problem, had there? England’s finest, Liverpool, had marched on and only been stopped when UEFA banned English clubs from European football following the Heysel tragedy. The institution was able to change the rules to declare other British players as ‘foreigners’, thus adding an extra bolt to the lock-out, ensuring the English club domination of European competitions was destroyed. A European attempt to thwart the English surge. Towards the end of the first decade of this century, UEFA faced a similar problem of English club dominance in European competitions following the resurgence of the FA Premier League. Its response? Again, to limit squad sizes and apply a set number of home grown players within it. In time, as the English club dominance in European competition is broken (four different finalists between 2004-9), this will once again lead the English FA to adapt in order to ‘beat the system’. Spot a behaviour pattern here? It’s the English way.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk