football The Future Of English Football

This is a subject that has been receiving a lot of attention of late, not just in the media but from within the games' governing bodies, concerns have been raised and opinions voiced about the possible dangers lurking for the future of the game in this country.

It is a subject on which Football England obviously feel very strongly. We too are concerned and our fears are manifold. This article will address some of those worries, though probably nowhere near all of them.

The first thing to establish here is what I, personally, mean by English football.

To me English football doesn't mean Manchester United and Chelsea and Liverpool etc. and the Premier League. These clubs and the league they play in are obviously in rude health, living the life of luxury thanks to Sky's billions and a clutch of foreign investors.

Most of these clubs, and the league itself, will survive and go on to thrive even if Sky and their wealthy backers decide to pull the plug sometime in the future.

It is not this that bothers me.

To me English football means the English national side, English football players and, more than anything else, a way of playing.

Although I am particularly concerned with England we may as well call it Britain. The traditions and style of playing football has always been the same within these isles and whereas I had no problem whatsoever with the proliferation of Scots, Welsh and Irish who used to populate our clubs; I am nowhere near as enamoured of the invasion of foreigners we now have.

When anyone talks about an English, or British, way of playing everybody understands exactly what is meant.

The images conjured are of blood and thunder, hard tackling, fast, furious, whole hearted football.

It is an image which has come to be derided in many places and, as a nation, we are being encouraged to disown and be embarrassed by it.

We are being assailed from every angle with the "fact" that our football is backward and ineffective. That we are labourers rather than craftsmen.

It is an opinion that I do not share and never will.

The latest person throwing fuel on the fire was Trevor Brooking who went into great detail in describing the way our coaching at youth level lags behind the continent.

Basically, he reckoned, we don't get our boys at a young enough age, we don't have the coaching resources to properly train the ones we do catch and this means that at the age of sixteen our budding footballers cannot compare with those in Spain, France and Italy etc.

I don't know enough about the relative set ups in place in these countries to make an accurate comparison but there were several things about Brooking's theory that invited comment.

The first was his continual, almost obsessive, use of Cesc Fabregas as his body of evidence for Spanish youth football being so much more advanced than ours.

Fabregas had been coached from the age of six at Barcelona before Arsenal basically stole him at the age of sixteen.

Nothing is proven by Cesc Fabregas, however.
He is an outstanding player, someone who genuinely lifts the standard of the Premier League.

But would he not have been an outstanding player even if he hadn't been at Barcelona at the age of six?

Sure, it no doubt helped his development and allowed him to realise his potential at an early age.

But surely Fabregas is a naturally gifted footballer. Brooking talks about first touch. Surely Fabregas wasn't taught how to trap a football. Surely Fabregas found trapping a football as easy to master as walking or talking, probably easier.

And Fabregas is the exception, not the rule. If every footballer coming out of the Barcelona academy was as good as him then we would have to admit that they were doing something remarkably right, and we were doing something wrong.

World class players, however, are generally born, not manufactured and you should be careful of jumping to conclusions based around the way these players emerge.

When Ajax of Amsterdam won the European Cup around a decade ago with a squad comprising of so many players that had come through their youth system everyone immediately decided that theirs' was the perfect system for developing young players.

Their methods were studied, documented and highlighted in the media endlessly and put before us as a foolproof method for rearing champions.

Of course Ajax have yet to challenge for another European Cup. Which is not to say their youth system is bad and lessons can't be learnt but is there any way of guaranteeing world class footballers? Or even Premier League class footballers?

While highlighting Fabregas Sir Trevor is careful not to make any mention of Wayne Rooney either. After all if we used him as an example surely we could just pretend that everything is fine with youth development in this country.

After all, he is a world class player. Isn't he?

The whole issue of coaching concerns me.

From coaching youngsters right through to coaching professionals. What good do coaches actually do?

Coaches make a difference to football, there can be no denying that. But is that difference for the better.

In the old days, which means the 1950's and earlier, coaching and tactics were kept to a bare minimum. Formations barely changed over half a century and teams just got on with the business of playing each other.

People laugh now at the scores that would regularly crop up each weekend as teams up and down the country tried to score more than the team they were playing against.

I don't know why. The only difference between football then and football now is that in those days teams went out to try and score against the opposition whereas now they go out and try to stop the other team from scoring against them.

It doesn't make them better footballers and it certainly doesn't make it any more entertaining for the spectators.

But coaches love to justify themselves therefore the old way had to be the wrong way. They don't seem to have worked out that in the end there can only ever be the same result. You either win, lose or draw and at the end of the season one team wins the league and one team finishes bottom. One team wins the cup and all the rest don't.

Once again the only difference is that nowadays the coaches and managers make sure that it is a lot less fun finding out who finishes where.

Another thing you will always hear coaches harping on about is how much faster the game is these days and how the great players of yesteryear wouldn't be able to cope in todays' game.

This really is the saddest, most annoying thing anyone can ever say.

It's nonsense for starters, because players from the 1950's brought up today would obviously be that much fitter/faster naturally, but should coaches not be more interested in skill?

Of course not because you can't coach someone to be a gifted footballer. You can only coach them to be fit, strong and organised.

Therefore coaches are intrinsically negative.

The funny thing is FIFA keep dreaming up ways to make it easier for you to score goals because that's what they want and every time they come up with something new all it does is make the coaches go twice as defensive because they're scared stiff it might be their team that concedes first.

It's great.