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How this UEFA report should drive the future of English football:

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Possession is nine tenths of the law, but whilst England understand their possession stats are much improved, there are other areas in the our game that need addressing too before being able to sit at Europe’s top football table with pride.

The UEFA Technical Report for Euro 2012 is on the verge of being released, but at the recent 10th UEFA Conference for European National Team Coaches in Poland current England manager Roy Hodgson was able to view the document before participating in the Q&A sessions afterwards.

Accompanied by Sir Trev (Brooking), the England brain-trust were also privileged to be in attendance at the ‘Final Four Forum’ which featured the head coaches of the four best teams in Euro 2012 (Cesare Prandelli, Joachim Low, Paulo Bento and Vincente Del Bosque).

Presumably after the good-natured banter between professional peers prior to the seminars, including no doubt much hilarity at the latest FIFA Rankings which sees England sitting pretty in 3rd, Roy and Trevor cannot have welcomed what would most likely have been various statements of the bleeding obvious as they read their school report.

MUST TRY HARDER.

This time we don’t mean pure effort out on the pitch.  As Roy himself points out, the England player’s application on the turf is admirable.  Well, as admirable as charging around like idiots until they knacker themselves out can be.  Much of England’s efforts can be compared directly with those of a Springer Spaniel – boundless energy but little subtlety.

Apparently all four of the semi-final coaches agreed that the current European game at least is becoming much more possession based.  At this point Roy must get that feeling students who haven’t revised for a test get – it’s like a hot ball of lead throbbing in your chest as your eyes scan questions to which you know you just don’t know the answer.  “Possession.  Shit.  I knew I should’ve revised that!”

Credit to Roy, he knows his sides limitations.  Whilst he claimed to have already identified the nation’s short-comings, he is quoted as saying “England must maintain possession of the ball better and we have to work hard at international and club level.  We know this.”

Well as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step in solving it.  So what’s the second step?  St. Georges Park and the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) are the two things Trev and Roy are touting as our main route to a cure.

The desire to increase the breadth and depth of the pool talent through the creation of a greater number of informed and skilled coaches is a good idea, and will no doubt result in some improvements.  The EPPP is less certain to guarantee success and has caused some levels of controversy with smaller clubs who seem to be the ones losing out.

That’s that then.  In a few years when England have thousands of new coaches all teaching kids how to play better football we will finally have a talent pool to rival our European counterparts.  Won’t we?  Well maybe, but maybe not.

In the forum the Germany coach Joachim Low recounted how he sat down with clubs in Germany TEN years ago to discuss a lack of quality in the final attacking third of the pitch.  Interestingly this is an area that the UEFA 2012 Technical Report identifies as a key weakness at ALL STAGES of the English game.

With collective action Germany have turned around the problem and now boast one of the most penetrative, fluid and effective attacking units in the modern international game.

If England are going to ever challenge to the game’s heavyweights they will need more than hoards of wannabe Mourinho’s on the Sunday park pitches.  They need a concerted and coordinated strategy with the Premier League and Football League to look at how to address the key issues identified as inherent weaknesses.  And it needs to be done quickly.

Germany saw this a decade ago, acted and now reap the rewards.  If the new Elite Development Director Dan Ashworth can make headway here then perhaps in the not so distant future it could be an England manager sitting in the Final Four Forum revealing the secrets of his success, rather than sat in the audience with a C+ and an embarrassing acknowledgement of being a footballing inferior.

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