The Reason Behind England’s ‘Failures’ Since 1966
This article is a submission for the Soccerlens Football Writing Competition; to participate, please read the details here.
Written by Tomas Hemmer-Hansen.
England won the World Cup in 1966, but since then, they have not even come close to winning again, neither the World Cup nor the European Championship. It seems that the development of English players has suffered at the hands of foreigners, who, at the same time, have made the English league the most cherished in the world. It is an unsolveable paradox, and they may have to wait a long time before winning a major trophy again.
As early as the 1970’s foreign players started moving into English club football. The Liverpool team that won the double in 1986 did not have a single English player in the team that started at Stamford Bridge on the day they won the championship. They had all sorts of other Brits and a few “real” foreigners. Today the agony of the situation has worsened to an extend that threatens the future of the England national side. The starting disease of foreigners from the 1970’s and 1980’s proved airborne and has now developed into a horrific virus that people seem to neglect, because they are wildly entertained by foreign skills today.
English clubs are allowed to sign players on scholarships at the age of 16. Or more precisely, clubs are allowed to offer these scholarships to players at the age of 14, but the scholarships may not commence earlier “than the last friday in June in the academic year in which they will reach the age of 16” (from the FA’s homepage: Rules of Association (PDF)). This basically means the clubs can “steal” foreign players, since in some other countries, these contracts may not be signed at such a young age. Players such as Cesc Fabregas (Arsenal), Gerard Pique (Manchester United), Dani Pacheco (Liverpool) are all examples of this. At the age of 16 or 17 foreign players, and in particular from southern Europe, will often have much more developed technical abilities, which means, they will be preferred over english players.
This is generally the case in English clubs with South European managers, such as Liverpool (Rafael Benitez, Spain), Arsenal (Arsene Wenger, France) and Chelsea (until recently Jose Mourinho, Portugal). These types of managers prefer technically and tactically strong players from their own countries over the English die-hard type of players that are produced from the English footballing education, because, naturally, the smaller clubs have English coaches for their young players. Another problem linked with the English way of coaching is that the typical style English football player is not suited for foreign leagues.
There is hardly an English player in any of the other top leagues in the world. This means that whenever the young talents are benched at the big clubs in England (basically all clubs in the Premier League), they will retry in the Championship in stead of moving abroad, because they do not know any other way of playing the game.
Arsenal have no English players in their preferred starting line-up, and both Chelsea and Liverpool have very few. Manchester United are the only club from the so-called top 4 that genuinely respects English talent, and they have a british manager that values british (and thereby also english) talent. Sir Alex Ferguson has previously backed a possible quotas on foreign players, when he in 2000 said that “I’d like to know what they propose before I commit myself to something that would be very influential in our game at the moment, but it certainly does warrant and merit great consideration” (from this BBC article).
While Sir Alex Ferguson does breed English talent, this summer he brought in Carlos Tevez (Argentina), Nani (Portugal) and Anderson (Brazil), so even he exploits the rules. You might call in a necessary evil, since any club aspiring to any sort of title has to buy foreign players to challenge for these, because that is what all the other clubs do.
The problem has further evoled into a situation, where major English talents are far apart, and therefore they are much more expensive than foreign talent of the same caliber. Naturally, a lot of clubs prefer 3 foreign talents for the price of 1 English, and so it has become a self-perpetuating process, where English talent is further and further apart.
But the problem does not stop with foreign coaches in England. A fairly new tendency is wealthy investors buying their way into clubs. Chelsea were the first, but since then Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and others have followed. These investors throw excessive amounts of money into their clubs, and so they cannot wait 4 years for a possible English talent to show his worth. In stead they spend their money on established foreign players, whom they lure to their clubs with massive salaries and sign-on fees. To mention some of these players:
Chelsea: Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack.
Manchester United: Ronaldo, Nani and Anderson.
Liverpool: Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel.
Manchester City: Martin Petrov
and last year Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez of West Ham.
It is a gathering of many of the best players in the world in one league, and it seems to continue in years to come.
Another aspect of bringing in these major foreign names is merchandise sales. Players bought for obscene amounts of money will automatically attract more attention and therefore sell more shirts, cup holders, mouse pads, car stickers and so on. Football has become a business, and the English Premier League is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for businessmen around the world. It’s all about fast success and immediate impact, and there is no time to hatch possible star players, when you can get guaranteed quality by spending big (except from Ballack and Shevchenko of course).
To any future coach of the English national team, these must all be worrying themes, and it seems that new regulations must be forced upon the clubs. Solutions could be a maximum number of foreigners (non-brits perhaps) per starting lineup, a cutdown in salaries or ensuring that youth academies are filled up with English players and not Spanish or African. But these restrictions face another problem: money. Money tend to rule in today’s football, and where there is money to be made, restrictions that will be a hindrance to the making of the same money will be difficult to implement. All the above proposed sollutions will make English club football less attractive, and so there is less money to be made from the brand that is The English Premier League.
For the English national team, the future looks bleak, since the needed talents are not developing, and it might take a long time, before we will see them celebrating like back in 1966. For us fans, we may have to get used to the look on this young boy’s face.
This article is a submission for the Soccerlens Football Writing Competition; to participate, please read the details here.
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Discussion - 16 Responses
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chelsea only has about 8 english players, but at least they’re all internationals…how many mancs have started for england recently?
I hope, you didn’t miss the point of the article… it’s not a club-biased approach, but merely an analysis of the problem.
But to answer your question, both Chelsea and Man Utd. have 6 English players in contention for the national team atm as I see it.
Its nice to see a serious article in this competition.. I agree that its going to be very difficult for England to win any of the 2 competitions again, because of too many foreigners in the league. In my opinion they have 7 or 8 really top players from the best teams in England. But the rest of the team including the bench, doesnt match the top 5 countries in the world. We saw it when Rooney got injured, how fragile the team is. Great article though!!
Well written article, but in my opinion the analysis is completely off the mark. Until about 1998 the Premiership was still dominated b English players, there were no players poached from Spain or Portugal or whatever and the English talent wasnt dispersed or hidden, but the national team still did badly.
You mention the real reason in your aticle, the fact that the way nglish players are coached will put them at a technical disadvantage to players from other countries, and that it is simply not good enough to compete a the top level. The tendency to by foreign players is an effect of th problem, not a cause. Until the coaching at youth level changess, England will continue to fare poorly. Anyone who agrees with the articles perspective is just clutching at straws
England will never have a realistic chance of winning the top competitions again until they start developing top class goal-keepers. No matter how good your outfield players, you will not win World and European championships in the modern era without a top goal-keeper.
The influx of foreign players into the English Premier League (EPL) has hurt England most by drastically reducing the number of EPL goalkeepers qualified to play for the country. Most of the keepers in the EPL are foreign; all of the big Four (Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool) have not only foreign first choice keepers, but the seconds are also foreign (Kuszczak, Almounia, Cudicini and Itandje).
In critical games since 2001, England have been let down time and again by calamitous goal-keeping. Just by way of example, remember these “howlers”: David Seaman against Brazil in the quarter finals of the 2002 world cup; David James against France in Euro 2004; Paul Robinson’s 2006 World Cup performances and against Croatia in the Euro 2008 qualifier.
The time when English goalkeepers were a by-word for “class” (eg’s Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton, Ray Clemence etc.) and the English would arrogantly laugh at the “antics” of foreign goalkeepers calling them “clowns” etc, belongs to another age.
England with a top class goal-keeper (like a Petr Cech) would stand a chance of going much further in major competitions. There are no outstanding young keepers currently pushing Robinson for his England place. His only genuine rival is David James, a man with his own troubled history of erratic performances.
The future of English goal-keeping appears bleak; it is certainly not in safe hands.
Anderson, Nani have never been established players and Ronaldo definitely wasn’t when he was bought, most people had never heard of him.
Ronaldo’s international debut was in the same summer in which he was bought and the same for Anderson.
It is obvious that it is not lack of talent that England suffers from. If you were to take the cumulative value of the starting eleven (with lampard, gerrard et al.) it would probably be higher than any other nations’ but what they lack is a complementation among the player and a good coach
The idea that the big bad foreigners are what’s ruining British football is so patently ridiculous that it makes me want to scream! You’re telling me, that if they banned all non-Brits from the EPL (I know that’s not exactly what you’re suggesting, but I get the sense you wouldn’t mind it) the English National team would be better???!! Not to mention that a quota on foreign players is almost certainly illegal and would dramatically reduce the quality of the world’s best or second best league, but what in God’s name would that solve anyway? You really think the problem with English football is it doesn’t develop enough good players?!? Gerrard, Lampard, Hargreaves, Rooney, Terry, Ferdinand, Beckham, Scholes. The emerging new guard of Young, Lennon, Rooney, Walcott, Agbonlahor, Bentley. What the %@#@ are you talking about?! The problem with the national team is NOT, repeat is NOT, a lack of talent or enough “developed” players. This next generation has as much talent as anyone’s. And the problem is DEFINITELY not that there are too many foreigners in the EPL, no matter what the chorus of xenophobes has to say about it.
England needs better coaching, needs a team that plays better together certainly. But has anyone also considered that maybe to win a cup competition (which all international competitions are) it requires you to be extremely lucky? I mean, I know we all think that the reason the Three Lions always lose on penalties is because they’re “mentally weak” or something, but is there anything that depends more on luck than a penalty shootout? I’m just sayin’….
Best contest submission ive read so far, hands down. Great job…..and to that blues fan, rio, neville(when not injured), rooney, carrick, brown, hargreaves ring a bell?
every couintry invests in foreign players italy and spain is full of s.american mexican and other european players including english.
INter milan were the 1st team in the world to do so hense the name internazional……
no talent OWEN, IS A TALENT IS JSUT ALWAYS INJURED
gerrard terry, lampard, cole rooney
all talented terry lampard and gerrard just have issues playing in the same team for england cause thye all consider them selves more important then the other and the fact that lampard and gerrard play the same position and lampard has to compramise his role to accomadate gerrard, means they dont play for each other. the problem is that the rarerity of english players means they get paid to much and think there to important and it causes friction amoungst them when it come to binding together and playing for their country, they just dont gel.
there is plenty of english talent young and old, the problem is they get paid to much, are over confident, think there to big and important.
selectors may have to re consider who they select for national duties so they can get a better performance, the best team isnt always the team that has the best players on paper???
look at netherlands, portugal croatia, serbia, no where near as fantastic in terms of doMestic competition, they stil have quality players but not as much depth in that area, but their national teams are awesome…..
THE QUALITY OF THE FOREIGN PLAYERS IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF ENGLISH PLAYERS IT MEANS SOME OF THEM HAVE TO STEP UP TO KEEP THEIR PLACE IN THERE CLUBS 1ST TEAMS
Thanks for the many comments.
Sam Adriance - I think you missed a little bit of my point, or I wasn’t clear enough. I don’t mind all the foreigners in the EPL, because I think they enhance the quality of the football played immensely. I just think it’s a major problem for the development of English players, since they’re not allowed to play as regularly as they would had the number of foreign players been reduced. The English national team is in a state now, where it relies on 1 striker (Rooney) to be fit, and very few winger (the overrated Joe Cole, and the to-fast-for-their-own-good SWP and Lennon). Don’t tell me that Downing has the class to take England to the top of any tournament.
In midfield the team lacks creativity big time. There’re plenty of hard-working players with a good right foot (Gerrard, Lampard, Carrick), but none of them produce anything, when they play for their national team. They might be dangerous against Liechtenstein and teams of that caliber, but once they meet Italy, France, Brazil, Argentina, suddenly these powerful midfielders are too slow-footed to keep up, and there’s no room for that screemer from 30 yeards out that is the trademark of these midfielders.
There’s no question that England’s defense is good enough, and that any team playing them will have a hard time scoring, and that’s why so many of their games have so few goals in them. England are strong defensively, but in terms of creativity, they’re so far behind their main opponents, because the type of creative midfielder is not produced, and if there was a creative midfielder, they rarely get to play at their clubs, because they have better foreign players doing their job.
Paul Scholes was the last creative midfielder with a high international level, and I don’t see any other coming through the ranks any time soon.
Wow that was long. I didn’t read all of it but just ask any West Ham fan and they’ll tell you the problem.
You need 3 West Ham players in the first team including the captain and two others who will score 4 goals in the world cup final. Simple. And impossible to prove it wouldn’t work.
Now we just need Robert Green, Anton Ferdinand and Dean Ashton and we’ve got a chance.
France, Italy and Germany have been able to perform at the international level with plenty of foreign players in their leagues. I do think the major difference between, say the 2002 and 2006 Italian sides lies more in their coaching and preparation than any huge improvement in the quality of their players.
If anyone saw England’s match today, I think one of my poins was illustrated to a great extend - that England need creativity big time. There’s simply no creative players of high quality coming through the ranks.
Some people have started to blame the number of foreign players for the current English malaise. But this shouldn’t be the case, the problems come from poor leadership. We haven’t really had a good manager since Venables. Thats where we should look.