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As Russians danced upon the sand - Rio wasn’t up for dancing
after that - and England’s dreams of qualifying for Euro 2008
lay as limp as a Paul Robinson parry, all the old inquests opened
up once again. Just why is it that English footballers can’t
see games out, why don’t they have the same technical ability
as their continental counterparts, why aren’t we producing
enough raw talent any longer?
More important, why do we lack the game intelligence to complete
what should be routine victories. Does anyone really think that
Germany or Italy would have lost to the Russians from being a goal
up after an hour?
No. The Russians wouldn’t have seen the ball in the second
half.
Ignoring questions of team selection and tactics, not in Russia
alone, but throughout the group, it seems ever more apparent that
English football just does not cut it on the wider stage.
When we qualify for tournaments, we routinely go out “bravely”
at the quarter-final stage after hanging on all the way to penalties,
because that’s about the level we generally are - in the top
ten in the world, top six or eight - usually - in Europe.
There certainly is a trade off between having what is commonly accepted
as the most exciting league in the world and a national side that
struggles. Our games are so exciting because they offer end to end
stuff, fast and frenetic, teams getting the ball forward quickly,
piling forward, dashing back. Great to watch, but it doesn’t
always give you control over a game.
As Graham Taylor said last week, “Russia were first class.
What they play is a short passing and very swift game. We do not
play that at international level. That’s not in our culture.
We’ve got to look much deeper at what we expect properly and
rightly expect from our national side. If you look over the years
we have not been successful. There is something deeper than just
the manager.”
The influx of foreign talent certainly has an impact - while training
with a Cantona or a Zola can inspire and improve young Englishmen,
those of lesser ability who take up space in our teams are stifling
our talent. Or are they?
If you’re not good enough to elbow your way past John Arne
Riise, Olof Mellberg or Pascal Chimbonda, you’re not going
to be good enough for England anyway. It’s a point that can
certainly be debated, but perhaps the scale of that particular problem
is overestimated.
What it comes down to is that we don’t produce enough technically
gifted, tactically intelligent players on a regular basis. Even
the England captain agauinst Russia is a player who lacks the footballing
discipline you need at top level, and if that’s the case, what
chance do we have?
The time has come when if we’re looking for a way forward for
English football, appoint a Jesuit monk as head of youth football
development. “Give me a child until he is seven and I will
give you the man” is a well worn Jesuit maxim, but it sums
up everything that we should be looking at doing in terms of getting
our children playing the game the right way, the way that has brought
the Dutch, the Italians, the French, the Germans should huge success
over the years. Catch them as young as you can, inculcate them with
the right attitudes, abilities, mindset, then let them flourish.
Don’t wait until they’re teenagers and you have to spend
all your time fixing bad habits.
The first ever FA Tesco Skills Road Show, a showcase for the new
coaching initiative that looks to reach youngsters across the country
and instil the right habits in them, took place last month. FA Chief
Executive Brian Barwick, England coach Steve McClaren and Trevor
Brooking, the FA Director of Football Development, were all in attendance
at the high profile launch of an initiative which Barwick is particularly
keen on.
“We were delighted to stage the road show at West Bromwich
Albion because it is a fantastic facility that Albion have invested
in and it was the perfect location. We hope it will be the first
of many road shows, because it’s important to get out on the
road, it’s important to underline the fact that the FA is not
a Londoncentric organisation. It can’t be, we can’t allow
that, because there are 37,000 clubs, 7 million people who play
the game.
But it’s very easy to fall into the trap of believing that
everything emanates from London and we need to demonstrate to people
that we care about local issues as well as national ones, and to
talk to them and find out what they’re thinking and what they
want from the FA.
“It is crucial we produce better young players. Trevor Brooking
has already underlined the fact that we have to move to age appropriate
coaches and make sure hat we have very good coaches at every level
of the game.
That’s the big job that lies ahead of us in the next few years.
Part of my job is to make sure that some of the business elements
of football are sorted out but also to support some of the development
areas of the game, to ensure that we can provide the right resources.”
In fairness to Brooking, he has recognised some of the key issues
as he explained to the press inside the warmth of West Brom’s
indoor football centre: “It’s important that we get out
to the 5 to 11 year olds, it’s a vital age group where they’re
especially receptive to learning, where you can give them good habits
that become natural to them, instinctive really, they do it without
thinking. We need to get quality coaches working with these age
groups at the elite end of the spectrum as well.
With so many overseas players coming in, the English youngsters
have to be that bit better because clubs at the top end, in the
Premier League, can draw on a global market now. To encourage them
to get that individual ball contact time at a very early age is
crucial.
“It tends to be that we get the least qualified, youngest coaches
working in the young age groups and it has been seen as the poor
relation if you like. We must change that. In other countries, they
really invest in good coaches to work with that age group and encourage
them to carry on at that level and to see that as an important career.
That’s something we’ve got to do. We’ve got 66 full
time Skills coaches working at the grassroots, we’d like to
get more, and ideally you’d love every club to have a full
time 5s to 11s coach and then full time from 11s to 16s. This is
a start. We’ve got to monitor whether it makes a difference,
and the signs are good early on. Instead of 66 coaches, I’d
like to see 466 or 866, whatever the right number is. We need to
see it spread right across the country and help all the youngsters
at an early age, identify the best ones to put them into the professional
structure as early as possible.
“Facilities such as this dome very important. I went to a Skills
session in Essex a couple of weeks ago with lots of enthusiastic
youngsters, but there was quite a biting wind that day, so it takes
a lot for the coaches to keep their attention and enthusiasm in
those circumstances. Given the weather we get through the winter,
it’s important to have high quality indoor facilities, not
only for local kids but also for the club’s Academy, because
you get good quality contact time in these situations than trying
to work on a rock hard pitch that’s covered in frost. The third
generation playing surface they’re using now is much better,
much truer than it was a decade ago when we were first laying artificial
pitches.
“Trying to get kids to learn technique on cut up, muddy parks
pitches is very difficult. In an environment like this, you have
a great chance to develop. The surface is trustworthy, you’re
not slipping over all the time, you’re not splashing through
the puddles. Here, you get a chance to master he basics of the game,
you can work on individual skills, on control, before you go out
and apply it in games. They’re not shivering cold, they’re
not wet and that’s important.
The younger age groups especially suffer in that sort of weather,
a lot of the facilities at Primary school level aren’t great,
and you struggle to hold their interest if you’re doing training
drills. They just want to run around and keep warm. That means they
don’t get really good sessions in the winter months and that’s
a very big opportunity that’s lost.”
But fine words butter no parsnips. We’ve been great at talking
a good game in this country for a decade or more, but isn’t
it time to put up or shut up? The litmus test of whether we genuinely
want to produce real English talent or not is about to be taken
- do we finally go ahead and finish building the National Football
Centre in Burton-upon-Trent, or do we decide it’s a case of
throwing good money after bad and close the whole thing down, a
decision which, if taken, would send out dreadful signals to all
those involved in youth football in this country.
Although the players it would produce would arrive too late for
Steve McClaren - on current form, a genius arriving in December
would be too late for his reign - the England coach is passionate
in his belief that the centre has to be built.
“Even smaller countries like Austria and Denmark are talking
about their centres of excellence. It is incredible. We need to
be the best in the world and having a centre of excellence would
help. Ultimately, we need it. We have a home where we play at Wembley
but we need one for all the administration and all the coaches because
at the moment, the coaches are here, there and everywhere.
“We are also in desperate need of a centre for medical development
because the biggest advances in football over the last 10 years
have been in medical and sports science. We need to be at the forefront
of that.”
All good common sense - perhaps more than you get at an England
post match press conference. But is McClaren whistling in the dark?
To be fair to him, Barwick is in a very difficult situation, heading
up an organisation which had made some catastrophic decisions before
he got there but which have come home to roost on his watch, not
least the disastrous financial mismanagement of the new Wembley
build. England’s likely failure to qualify for Euro 2008 will
cost further fortunes.
As he concedes, that will have an impact: “We get the fact
people seem to want it, we just have to bottom out the finances.
At the moment, we have a fantastic set of pitches and two sheds
but not much else.
We have already spent a lot of money on this project but sometimes
you have to bury the money and admit it has not worked out. We still
believe we should give it every chance but the next two months will
be very significant. There will be a decision by the FA board in
December. I guarantee that.”
Now is the time for Barwick to show the vision he showed when he
was in television, now is the time for him to step up to the plate
and steer this desperately important project through to completion.
It’s a £50million project. £50million. That’s
two Darren Bents and a Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Never mind the cost. We can’t afford not to spend the money,
not if we want a team to go to Euro 2024 with a genuine chance of
winning it. The time for hype is finished. A bit of substance wouldn’t
go amiss.
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