It’s the beautiful game, but it’s increasingly under attack. Is English football in rude health or is it on the critical list? We asked Matt Jackson, survivor of the Premiership years just where he thinks the game is going...
This is the time of year when we all start to look ahead, when we allow ourselves to dream of what might lie ahead in the coming twelve months. But if you’re serious about achieving, about succeeding, about making things happen, then it’s also a time to take stock. After all, you need to know where you are before you can work out where you’re going. On that basis, we went to talk to a man who has huge experience of the game in the Premier League era.
Matt Jackson started his professional career at Luton Town just before the Premiership came into being and completely reshaped the footballing landscape in this country. Over these subsequent 16 seasons, Matt has played a great deal of his football at the top level, with Everton, Norwich City and Wigan Athletic. That scope is rare, for there are few others whose careers have encompassed the lifespan of the Premiership, Gary Speed and Ryan Giggs notable others. All of which means Matt is in a pretty decent position to talk about one or two of the burning issues.
“There’s a lot of talk at the moment about English players and English coaches coming through the game, whether or not they get a fair opportunity and what the implications are long term. As things stand, it’s difficult to see a resolution to it. When Steve McClaren finished with England, there really was no automatic choice for the job among English coaches which is no surprise given that the most successful coaches in the Premier League in recent times have been Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho. It would have been very interesting if the likes of a Paul Jewell were to have been given the chance, just to see where that might take us, but in reality, with all the media pressures and so on, that was not the kind of decision that the FA would make.
“With England having failed to qualify for the European Championships, right from the outset they were after a big name, and Capello’s CV in club football really is second to none, it’s outstanding. But it is a great shame that we can’t find any Englishman to fill the national role, particularly given how highly our football is regarded across the world.”
That high regard comes, in no small part, from the huge amount of money that has been pumped into the top flight over the course of the last 16 years since Sky and the Premier League hopped into bed together. As a result, every player in the world fancies a crack at playing in England and that has had implications, both good and bad, for the health of our game.
“I started playing just before the Premier League came in and in what is a comparatively short space of time, the game has changed beyond recognition in lots of ways. Obviously, Sky and the money that has come into the game has made a huge difference. I remember being at Everton, 15 or 16 years ago, one of the biggest clubs in the country, and you’d hear that a player was getting £5,000 a week and that would seem unbelievable. You were talking about the very best of the players at that stage earning that money, where now the top boys are earning 10 and 20 times that amount in a few cases. It’s a radical change.
“The standard of the game in the Premier League has gone through the roof. The introduction of so many foreign players has unquestionably raised standards. I think it’s been an absolutely excellent thing for our game, for the supporters and it has created a league which really is the most exciting in the world, I don’t think there’s much question about that. But it has had ramifications for the amount of English talent coming through, for the quality of the national side and its level of success. Looking at our performances in tournaments since then, the England team has definitely suffered.
“One of the issues is that while French, German, Spanish, Polish players are coming here, our players don’t tend to travel that well. David Beckham has been a bit of an exception, and even he had his problems with Real Madrid. I think the game is so strong over here, the financial rewards for players are potentially so great, that there’s no real need to go abroad if you can establish yourself here, nothing pushes players down that route.
“In addition to that, as has been talked about a lot of late, our development of players is very much geared to playing in this country, to playing the English style of football which is clearly quite different from the way most teams play on the continent. The national side has shown that. Ours is not a style of football that sits comfortably with the rest of Europe, they approach it in a slightly different way to us. As a result, our players maybe aren’t so attractive to foreign teams.”
Not only has the introduction of so much foreign talent reduced the opportunities for young English players, the advent of foreign money has skewed the balance of competition between the top teams. Once upon a time, English football had its “Big Six”. That seemed to elitist at the time but now we look back on those days pretty nostalgically...
“When I was at Everton and the Premier League started, we were viewed as a side with a realistic chance of winning the title. And there were probably six or seven other sides who had similar views. Now, for Everton, a good season is qualifying for Europe, and not even the Champions League. I don’t think it can be seen as a good thing for the game that season after season, we are down to just these four teams who will fight for the Premier League between them and will almost certainly take all the Champions League places. All credit to them, they’re outstanding teams, I’m sure that their supporters are absolutely thrilled to be able to watch them week in week out, but for the wider game, it can’t be good.
“And each year that goes on, they get financially stronger because they’re in the Champions League and they get fortunes from that and the whole thing becomes self perpetuating. It doesn’t mean that the Premier League can’t be exciting, because it’s separated into two or three different battlegrounds, you get some fantastic relegation fights for instance. But for the foreseeable future, to know that the Premier League will only be won by Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United, perhaps even one from two or three to be totally realistic, that cannot be healthy because one of the greatest joys of sport is that it should be unpredictable to a certain extent.
“The big question is, is having the most exciting league in the world compatible with having a successful national team? Eventually it comes down to numbers, and the numbers that come through the turnstiles. If the game loses its way, people will very quickly find something else to do and stop coming. At the moment, there aren’t any great signs of that happening. Football is still generating huge revenues from people coming to games, from Sky and Setanta at Premiership level particularly. I think if you talk to most supporters, the second choice for most is England. Everybody wants them to do well, but not at the expense of their own club or at the expense of the kind of football we get to see in this country. And that makes being the England coach a very difficult job, because there’s so much pressure, but nobody is in any hurry to help you or to make life easier for you.”
Which is where we came in... |
