Another world cup is upon us and once again the nation will have high expectations for England to win football’s top prize. With qualification to Brazil 2014 now secured, now would be a good time to look at why the national team won’t be winning the Jules Rimet trophy anytime soon.
Since 1966, the holy year in which England did lift the trophy, managers have stated that they thought they would win the world cup. Only once has that prediction come true. Sir Alf Ramsey himself, the only manager to win the World Cup with England. Since then there have been many unsuccessful predictions of world cup glory, Ramsey himself made two.
When knocked out of the tournament in 1970 Ramsey said, “we must now look ahead to the next world cup in Munich where our chances of winning I would say are very good indeed.” England failed to qualify for that tournament. Ron Greenwood in 1982 – “I honestly thought we could have won”. Glenn Hoddle in 1998 – “my innermost thought, which was that England would win the world cup.”
Starting with the manager, there is this expectancy that England will win the World Cup, where does this expectancy come from though? This best quote to sum up this idea that England should be a dominant force is by Johnny Haynes of the 1958 side, “everyone in England thinks we have a God-given right to win the world cup.” It is only now that people are starting to realize that we are not some sort of divine football team who should automatically be in a final of the World Cup. One simple fact to this is that English footballers are not good enough to compete at the top level, technically and tactically.
For several years now fans have been criticizing that there are not enough English players in the Premiership. Some have seen that as the demise of the English national team as so few Englishmen are playing regularly in the top English teams. On failure to qualify for Euro 2008 Steven Gerrard said, “I think there is a risk of too many foreign players coming over, which would affect our national team eventually if it is not already. It is important we keep producing players.”
Several important figures in the game such as Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter have also commented on the lack of Domestic players in England’s top football division. But why is there such a lack of quality English players being produced? After all the academies of the Premiership clubs are designed to nurture young English footballers and help propel them into the first team, so that the club need not spend money on a foreign talent.
The problem itself lies in the English way of recruiting players. England is for the most part a middle-class country, that is to say the middle classes dominate the population. Football however is a workingman’s game, or so it appears to be, and the clash in classes is what is causing to be a problem with the modern game.
Education in England is becoming more and more essential and the number of people staying on after the age of 16 for higher education has been on the rise since the late 80’s. Yet football teams recruit their youth players largely from the working classes, as at 16 players with that are deemed good enough or show enough potential will be asked to leave education and become a full time youth scholar.
This causes a dilemma for most of the middle-class boys as there is often pressure from their parents to stay in education and they themselves even know that the chances of turning professional are slim. This is not to say that at 16 education stops for the boys selected to play for the youth teams. Due to EU laws they are required to partake in some sort of education. This is more often than not run by the LFE (League Football Education) and composes of a B-TEC National Diploma, or certificate in sport and leisure. This is by no means to be snubbed at, but it is nothing of the sort of education the middle classes want.
Football in today’s society laughs at, and is weary of the educated, therefore the middle class tend to be disregarded by the football community and the selection pool for promising talents drops in size, limiting clubs to look at the working class for their future superstars. Boys from the middles classes switch to games such as cricket, rugby and hockey, and I think it is fair to say that you can see an improvement by the national team in all these sports since the late 80’s – the same time the middle class really started to emerge.
Often you now hear ex-players say of the English youngsters “they’re being over coached,” but that is like saying in a school that the pupils are being over educated. English footballers leave education at 16 as it is believed that they now have more time to fully concentrate on football, as education is only a distraction, but in theory they only train for two to three hours a day, so to say education would be a distraction is rather unjust.
We can look at some players from the continent that all have had higher education and we can agree that they are world-class players; Ruud Guillt, Dennis Bergkamp, Andreas Iniesta and Socrates. Yet the football community in England is weary of educated people.
Graeme Le Saux is the best example of this. At Chelsea Le Saux, spoke with rather a “posh” accent, he read broadsheet newspapers and had a passion for going to the theatre or museum. Because of this he was labeled as “gay” from his fellow professionals. This attitude taken towards Le Saux is simply because he is different in terms of education.
If you look at the setups at centre of excellences and academies you will see that the majority of boys playing are from the working classes, one or two will be from the middle class but they will be subject to ridicule from the others. They will be made fun of, for the way they dress, or the taste in music and what they do for entertainment.
You will also listen to a coach give a half time team talk, which will be no more than a rage. A classic rant from coaches at half time when their team is losing is to say, “Do you want to play here? There are hundreds of lads all over the country who would die to have a chance of playing for a club like this. I could get 11 lads from the local park who would play with more passion than you lot.”
You never see a coach take a game and look at it with critical thinking, we are losing, and there is clearly a problem how do we fix it. No, you see a man who believes that playing with passion and hard work is the answer.
For me this has been the biggest problem with English football, a working class background installs beliefs that to be good at something you need to have passion and commitment for the cause. If we were to look at the types of players England have recently had in their teams such as, John Terry, Jamie Carragher, Wayne Rooney and even Alan Shearer would you honestly say out of all the players in the world you would pick them off their playing ability?
Rooney may just fall into that category, but as for the rest what they make up for in passion and commitment they lose in technique and tactical awareness. Barcelona’s current team is composed of what are probably the most skilled collection of players we have ever seen. Yet out of that squad how many of them would you say play with “their heart on their sleeve,” or would “give blood sweat and tears for the club.” On face value you would probably say none but technically and tactically no one else compares.
This is why teams such as Germany, Holland and Spain do better than the English, they are educated, and they think abut the game. Johann Cryuff famously said, “Football is a game you play with your head.” We in this country are medieval in our thinking on the game. Since Euro ’96 we haven’t come close to winning a major international competition and at this rate we aren’t getting any closer. Our arrogance and mindset of battling and “wanting it more” than the other team is what is letting us down at the top level.
Yes passion and commitment is nothing to be laughed at, but that alone is not good enough. Until English football starts looking at the way it plays the game from outside the box, and starts thinking about it more we are going to be left behind in the sport that we invented.
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