This article is a submission for the Soccerlens Football Writing Competition; to participate, please read the details here.

I am so sick and tired of England’s failures on the international stage being blamed on foreigners. Now FIFA president Sepp Blatter wants to challenge the EU laws that prohibit quotas on foreign players.

He says: “‘This is a matter of principle and we need to protect the national identity of the football clubs,” and “When you have 11 foreigners in a team, this is not good for the development of football.” He also goes on to say that footballers “are not workers” and therefore shouldn’t be protected by the EU’s labor laws. If they’re not workers, then what exactly are they getting paid for again?

This is the kind of xenophobic fear mongering that I’ve just had enough of. They are too many of them! England doesn’t develop enough good, young players! Ban the foreigners! Brits are good enough for us! It’s Wenger’s fault—he doesn’t start any Englishmen! He should put the success of a national team he doesn’t care about above, you know, doing his job (which is, if you remember, to win games for Arsenal).

Can we please all give this a rest? First of all, the EPL is either the best or second best league in the world and the most popular. This is because the best managers in England try to find the best players, not the best English players, not the best British players, but the best players, period. You put a quota on the number of foreign players, you put a quota on quality.

Also, I won’t get too deep into the moral, political and legal issues of stipulating what employees a business can have based on something so arbitrary as country of origin, but what if I said, for instance, the following: “I think Chelsea has too many black players. It’s affecting the development of our young white players. You should only be able to start two black players on any team.” Would that really be all that much less ridiculous? (Yes, I know there’s no “White Racial Team” or whatever it would be called, but as I’ll try to prove, having more foreigners in the league has almost no effect on the quality of the national squad, so this is really just a prejudiced desire to get rid of those pesky foreigners.)

This is a free market people; if you’re good at your job, you get the best deal for the cheapest price. If you limited the number of foreigners on a team, that would drive the price of Brits even higher than their already ridiculously high levels, forcing teams to pay more for less. Consider for instance, that Martin Petrov cost a little over £4m while Portsmouth was asking for £8m for Matty Taylor’s services.

Taylor is a lot closer to being half as valuable as Petrov than being twice as valuable, but because he’s English, he’s “worth” twice as much money. Now imagine a league where a team has to start, let’s say, four Brits. Then what is Taylor “worth”? £12m? £15m? Where does it end?

I suppose you can make a reasonable argument that people like Wenger have a bias against Brits—he could probably use both Pennant and Bentley right now. But would you really want anything to change at the most beautiful team in the Prem if not the whole world? And where exactly does it say in his job description that, in addition to winning games, he should also be producing young English talent? His job is to make Arsenal the best team possible, simple as that. Helping England doesn’t—and shouldn’t—enter his thought process. Finally, is England really worse because Pennant and Bentley aren’t at Arsenal anymore? Good players find a place to play, pretty much no matter what.

Now, let’s consider the theory that England isn’t developing enough good players, regardless of the reasons behind it. Well, right now, the national team is pretty stacked, with the likes of Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard, Terry, Ferdinand, Hargreaves and Owen.

But I assume you all must mean that there aren’t any good young players coming up then? Right, because the nucleus of Rooney, Lennon, Young, Walcott, Bentley, Agbonlahor, Ashton, Richards, Noble and Taylor is just absolutely atrocious. Surely even Bulgaria must have a better crop of young footballers than that bunch of no talent losers. Honestly, if you got the right coach, England’s U-21 team (including the players already on the senior side) has more than enough talent to qualify for the World Cup. Talent is NOT, repeat is NOT, the problem with England’s international fortunes.

What is the problem? Oh, I’m not really sure. I still think Steve McLaren is a bad coach, no matter how well the most recent friendlies went. They don’t have a good enough goalkeeper (which must be the foreigners’ fault!). Their managers have a history of choosing players because of their names and not because of how they fit into the team. The argument that England’s coaching system doesn’t produce technical players may have some merit (though I fail to see how Beckham, Scholes and David Bentley aren’t “technical”). Also, I think luck, plain and simple, has been a big, if certainly not the only, factor. These international competitions are all cup competitions, and therefore, heavily dependent on having the bounces fall your way, especially in the penalty shootouts.

Anyway, whatever you think the reason is that England has lost so many times of late on the big stage, can we at least agree that it’s not because of a lack of talent, and therefore, not a product of too many players from outside of Britain in the Premiership taking all the opportunities away? It wasn’t when foreigners started entering the Prem in droves that the Three Lions stopped winning big. It had already been a long time since the last World Cup victory. What adding European, South American and African players did do is make the EPL one of the two most exciting leagues in the world, with four of the very best teams in the world, and has actually probably forced British players to get better to keep up.

The simple truth is foreigners have been good, not bad, for the English game, and the campaign to expel them ignores the facts and smacks of xenophobia.

This article is a submission for the Soccerlens Football Writing Competition; to participate, please read the details here.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

In 2003, Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball changed the way the general public looked at baseball statistics, and also helped hasten a revolution that was already beginning in player evaluation. By following around the innovative General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, and shedding light on how his teams consistently competed with teams like the Yankees and Red Sox on 1/3 of the payroll, Moneyball showed us the value of visionary statistical analysis.

Now, what Lewis’ book is really about is a model that can apply not only to sports but business in general: in order to succeed with fewer resources, you must learn what the rest of the industry undervalues and exploit it. But with football, like in baseball at the beginning of the millennium, detailed, truly informative statistical analysis is a widely unexplored avenue. Certainly there are companies that do some of this kind of research and sell it to the clubs, but it is going be when an individual club makes a breakthrough on its own that we’re going to see things really change.

Of course the reason that baseball analysis, and to a lesser extent basketball and American football analysis, have developed in-depth statistics more quickly than football is that they are games more conducive to recording stats, but, ultimately that is no excuse for the beautiful game to lag behind. Look at the advanced fielding metrics that are now being developed in baseball (did you know that Troy Tulowitzki has saved about 12 runs this year for the
Rockies over an average defensive shortstop?). Surely, it is not a simpler proposition to analyze something like fielding—where the only generally available stats are fielding percentage and put outs, which are even more useless in evaluation than goals, assists and clean sheets—than it is to analyze football.

There is a great incentive to be the pioneers of this too. For instance, consider that ESPN’s John Hollinger has developed a very reliable system where he can take a basketball player’s stats in the Euroleague and translate them to predict the player’s effectiveness in the NBA. Imagine if an English team could come up with a similar system to assess players from other countries!

For years teams have had the choice of taking a risk on foreign talent, or paying a premium for “proven” Premiership players. Sven showed us this summer just how much bang for your buck you can get if you choose the right players from overseas—Elano was bought for half the price of Darren Bent for Chrissakes! The big issue with that is that for every Berbatov, there’s a Morientes. Unless you have a system to tell you how well the players will adapt, that is. Of course, you couldn’t just have a formula that translated goals in the Bundesliga to goals in the Prem. You would have to develop complex stats of your own that told you how much each player brings to the pitch irrespective of his teammates, which would help you in innumerable other ways too, like deciding which players to mark the most heavily as well as who to target in the transfer market.

It won’t be easy, and I certainly don’t know what the system will look like, but I’m certain there are people who can do it, and the forward-thinking team that sees that and starts pouring money into stats will reap the benefits. The A’s have been better in the regular season than the Yankees 3 out of the last 7 years, and close to them in most of the others, with about the difference in payroll between Fulham and Chelsea. The team that hires football’s equivalent of Billy Beane will be the team that breaks the Big 4 monopoly. I can’t wait!

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

After Liverpool’s unconvincing draw at Fratton Park with a less than full-strength squad, people are once again, as it seems now a yearly rite, piling on Rafa Benitez’s rotation policy for Liverpool. For instance, this article by Norman Hubbard on Soccernet.

You can say that the reason it keeps coming up is that it’s still what is holding Liverpool back, but I have to disagree. What held us back in the past was a combination of a lack of attacking talent and a lack of attacking will against poor teams. We have, I think, solved both of those problems at least to some extent, and so the tides at Anfield are turning.

Yes, Liverpool’s three best players, Torres, Gerrard and Mascherano were all left out of the starting XI on Saturday, and that very well may be what cost us the three points. Liverpool on the road against a good team without those three are not going to dominate; there’s no way around that.

There seems to be a belief, however, that this is something Rafa regularly does. This is simply not true. The players he rotates are the Kuyts, the Pennants, the Benayouns, the Arbeloas. Stevie G played 35 Premiership matches last year, and two of the ones he missed were at the end of the year when there was nothing to play for. The only other great players LFC had for all of last year, Jamie Carragher and Pepe Reina, played 34 and 35 league games, respectively.

As you can see, Rafa doesn’t usually leave his match-winners out of the team. He rotates the players that can be replaced easily and will therefore benefit at the end of the year by being much fresher. For instance, by rotating Pennant, Benayoun,
Babel and sometimes Riise on the wing, he saves them for the last part of the season without losing much on the pitch. When you have four players like that who are so closely bunched in talent, it makes sense to rotate them to give them rest.

What happened on Saturday was an aberration brought about by very unfavorable circumstances. The Portsmouth game was sandwiched around the international break and LFC’s most important CL group stage game, away to Porto. Gerrard played 70 minutes on Saturday against Israel and then the full 90 on Wednesday against Russia. Torres played an hour on Saturday and then 90 on Wednesday. Mascherano had just flown back all the way from Australia.

Rafa has already stated, I think justifiably, that he wants to qualify for the round of 16 in the CL as quickly as possible so he can focus on the PL. So he needs at least Gerrard, and probably Torres and Monster Masch to play on Tuesday. And anyway, could you imagine Stevie-G being left out of any big European game?

Would you have Gerrard play four games in a little over a week, on a broken toe? And even though Torres and Mascherano are young, they still need some rest.

Now, if I was in Rafa’s position, I would have started Torres on Saturday, to hopefully provide that spark we were missing, and left him out of the team against Porto, but what Rafa did was perfectly reasonable. Porto are at least as good a side as Portsmouth, and in the scheme of things, the Porto game is more important. By putting our best side on the pitch against them, it’s a signal of intent to win the group (which is not extremely important but is helpful). More critically, it’s a calculated risk that we won’t have to play our best players in the last game or two of the group stage, thereby helping in what’s really important, the Premiership.

And in the end, we got a point at one of the toughest places to play in the PL. I still think of it more as two points lost rather than one gained, but it was a sacrifice worth making for the long term health of the team.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Even as a Liverpool fan, I have a major soft spot for Tottenham Hotspur. Even us Big 4 supporters would like to see English football shaken up a little though of course not at the expense of our own clubs.

For so long it seems, Tottenham was the team that was going to do it, to prove that the Big 4 weren’t invincible. Now, they’re barely above the drop zone. We all know Spurs are playing horribly, and the most popular gossip topic is how long it will be until Martin Jol is finally fired.

I agree that Jol has to go—there’s no confidence left in him, and Spurs need someone more skilled tactically to get to the next level—and I also agree that they could use a new goalie (though Robinson’s not that bad). There’s another player, however, that Tottenham needs to replace. And Spurs fans aren’t going to like it.

Now, it would never have gotten to this point if the 16.5 million pounds spent on Darren Bent this summer had been spent, instead of on Spurs’ strongest position , on one (or more) of their three very weak positions (both central midfield spots and LM). Instead,White Hart Lane can boast of having four Big 4 quality strikers (all would at least be regular subs for the best teams) but only one midfielder of true quality (Lennon, and even he’s overrated).

To all those people that say that Spurs’ problems aren’t related to the quality of their players, I have to disagree. They certainly have the fifth most talent in the league, but the difference between fourth and fifth is pretty huge. The main issue for Tottenham right now is that they have neither steel nor creativity in the center of midfield. Even the infamous left side—where left back Bale has been excellent—isn’t nearly as big a problem.

I can’t believe Jenas has 16 England caps. He’s not terrible, but he’s a mid-table attacking midfielder at best, not close to Champion’s League quality. Tom Huddlestone is too passive though he may still have a bright future. Didier Zokora just isn’t very good. Kevin-Prince Boateng never gets to play, so no one knows how good he is. Same with Adel Taraabt. Teemu Tainio is the only one of their CMs that I really like. He’s not better than the others, but he brings more of the qualities that Spurs need at the moment, and with his versatility, anyone would be glad to have him in their squad.

Right now, Spurs should be playing Bale at LM, Tainio as a holding player, and either Malbranque (who’s better in the center) or Robbie Keane just behind the two strikers—Berbatov and Bent/Keane. But that team still isn’t good enough. We’ve spent the last six months wondering whether Spurs would keep Dimitar Berbatov happy enough to stay at White Hart Lane. Now it’s time to sell him no matter what he wants.

The prospect of him at Man Utd terrifies me, but wherever he goes, it’s the right thing for Spurs to do. His value will never be higher, and considering that ownership probably won’t be excited to spend another 40M next summer after Spurs’ inevitable mid-table finish (I’m guessing 8th), they’ll need to sell players to buy new ones. Berba should bring in about 25M, as long as he plays well this year. Combine that with the sale of Jenas for about 8M, and Zokora for 5-6M and now they’re in business.

With that money, they could buy Matty Taylor (5-8M), Stephen Appiah (5-8M), Rafael Van der Vaart (10-15m) and either a young big man or save the money and promote another striker from within their ranks (I’ve heard they have some talented forwards on the youth team). Taylor and Bale would be an excellent interchangeable LB/LM partnership on the left flank, Appiah would give them the steel and power in midfield they so desperately need and Van der Vaart would give them creativity, invention and support to the strikers.

Maybe Van der Vaart wouldn’t want to come to a team not playing Champion’s League football, but it’s not like he’s playing with a bunch of world beaters at the moment for HSV. Oh, and if Sven doesn’t think he needs Andres Isaakson any more with Kasper Schmiechal doing so well, maybe he could be acquired for 5 or 6M too….surely Robbo would bring in that much. And if not him, then maybe Jaaskelainen? That would leave them with a lineup that looked like this:

Isaakson

Chimbonda Dawson King Bale

Appiah

Lennon Taylor

Van der Vaart

Keane Bent

Subs: Cerny, Defoe, Malbranque, Kaboul, Lee, Tainio Others of note: Boateng, Huddlestone, Gardner, Rocha, Taraabt, Assou-Ekotto This may all have to wait ’til the summer of course—not least because it leaves Man U without a striker to open the door for a Liverpool title.

It will be hard to sell to the fans, but it needs to be done. And with a new manager, this looks like clearly the fifth best team in England to me, with a chance (with some luck) to do more.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Imagine this scenario:

You have a very good right-sided player, a great defensive midfielder and another good CM. You are offered the chance to swap your good right-sided player for the best CM in the world, at no cost. Accepting the deal means that one of your good central midfielders will go to the bench and you’ll have to play your back up on the right who isn’t quite as good as the player you’re swapping. What do you do? You jump at the chance, knowing that the jump from very good to world-class is much bigger than the fall of from very good to decent.

That’s exactly what Liverpool did this summer when they moved Steven Gerrard back to the inside. Gerrard was a very good player on the right for Liverpool, but he’s not quick enough, doesn’t provide enough width and doesn’t beat players one on one enough to be a great right-sided player. He is, however, a great central midfielder.

Now, I don’t want this to devolve into another debate about whether Gerrard is truly world class, or whether Gerrard is better than Lampard, or how Gerrard isn’t fit to carry Darren Fletcher’s jock strap, or whatever else you want to argue. Suffice it to say, I think Gerrard is world class, and despite my allegiance to Liverpool, I don’t think that’s an unfounded opinion. In fact, I think Stevie-G is the best CM in the world, except for perhaps Michael Essien. (Obviously, I am considering Kaka a forward because he is clearly better than either.)

Think about this. Let’s say that Spurs swapped Berbatov (Very, very good) for Kaka (World Class) this summer. And let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that they weren’t allowed to play Kaka in midfield where they really need him and had to use him as a forward. That would mean Keane, their second or third best player, would have to go to the bench because the two couldn’t play together. Imagine how transformed the team would be anyway. Wouldn’t that be the only thing anyone would be talking about? And wouldn’t Spurs have been preseason favorites to finish fourth—at least? And I doubt that they would be in the bottom part of the table after five games either.

This isn’t to say that I think Liverpool’s Captain Fantastic is as good as Kaka, so the example may be slightly exaggerated. But I do think Berbatov the forward is better than Gerrard the right-sided player, and I think the difference between Berbatov and Kaka is about the same as the difference between Gerrard on the right and Gerrard in the center, if you can believe it.

I know Gerrard was great on the right two years ago, but he certainly wasn’t last year, and he’ll always be better in the center, as just about everyone knows. Did you see how incredible he was against Chelsea, even playing with a broken toe? He was clearly the best player on the pitch. And I expect I’ll be able to say that about him in a lot of time this year.

So was the most important acquisition of the transfer window Spanish starlet Fernando Torres? Or “Next World Superstar” Ryan Babel? Or was it Florent Malouda or Alex? Or Thierry Henry or Owen Hargreaves? Anderson or Nani? Maybe the tastefully named Dudu? Nope. It was Liverpool adding the world’s best central midfielder. And that is why Stevie-G finally has a real chance to be kissing his (and Liverpool’s) first Premier League trophy at the end of the season.

1st Premier League, 19th league trophy – just clarifying you guys jump all over…

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

I’m an American, but only the most self-deluded fans here think we’re going to be a world power in the near future…though if Altidore progresses like he can, and we find a left back who doesn’t absolutely suck and we play like we did against Mexico in the Gold Cup, and we get a few lucky breaks…

Anyway, my point is, that I spend most of my time on the international level rooting for England. I like their players and I like the country. And since winning Euro 2008 looks like a lost cause (and if it forces the FA to drastically rethink how they approach the national team, it’ll be worth it), it’s never too early to start thinking about the World Cup in South Africa.

So, I’d like to share with you what I hope the Three Lions will look like in 2010:

Foster

Subs: Carson, Lampard, Barry, Lescott, Derbyshire, Lennon

Rest of Squad: Andy Johnson, Crouch, Agbonlahor, Carrick, Woodgate, Steven Taylor, Downing, Bentley/J. Cole, Shorey/Ashley Cole, SWP

Now let me try to address what I think are the most obvious questions about this team:

Lampard on the bench? I think most people should understand this one, but I’ll explain it anyway. It’s not that he’s not good enough for England, just that he’s not as good as Steven Gerrard. Think about it this way: if we had Cech and Buffon, even though you could make a strong argument that they would be our two best players, we couldn’t play both in goal, and we wouldn’t play Cech at center-half just to get him on the field. In the same way, we can’t play two attacking central midfielders, and if you’re going to play one of them as a holding player, you might as well play Hargreaves instead because he does that job better. Not to mention that Lamps will be 32 (I think) by then, and who knows how good he’ll still be. His primary purpose in this team will be to come on when we’re chasing a game and fill in for Stevie-G if he gets injured.

Walcott on the wing? This is probably my most controversial pick. I think Walcott has as much potential as any English player other than Rooney, so my hope is that he reaches a lot of that potential by 2010. I know, long term, his best position may be as a second striker type, but there’s no way he can play up front with Rooney. So the wing it is. And if he’s not good enough by then, both Lennon and Agbonlahor will be.

Baines at Left Back? There are a lot of choices here. None of them are great, and none of them are bad. Ultimately, my thinking came down to this: I think Cole will have lost a step, Baines is significantly younger and basically already as good as Shorey, and I’d like Lescott on the bench because of his versatility.

Bent is the best we can do? Yes, I think he is. Of the English strikers who have the necessary characteristics to partner Rooney (i.e. can play as a target man), I think he is the best today and also has the most potential. That’s with apologies to Matt Derbyshire, who I think will be great but is more suited to changing a game by coming on as a sub.

Carrick isn’t even a sub? I had a hard time leaving him off because I think he’s very good (the Germany game notwithstanding), but we can’t have two players who only play central midfield on the sub’s bench. Barry can play the holding role and also LB and LM.

Will Terry still be good enough in his early 30s? Who knows? To be honest, he’s not that great for England now. But he’s a leader, I’ll give him that. He will probably still deserve a place in the team, and if not, Woodgate or Lescott (who I think is excellent) can take over.

Now, the BIG question:

Will this team play any defense?

Walcott and Ashley Young are as much forwards as they are midfielders, and Steven Gerrard is an attacking midfielder who thrives when playing without many defensive responsibilities. That being said, I still think it will work. Our back four are good, Gerrard does track back, Young and Walcott play in midfield for their club teams, and you can drop Rooney even with the wingers so he’s almost another midfielder. It can work. And since when has an England team ever been too exciting and attack-minded?

At worst, they’ll be whole lot more fun to root for than our current squad.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News