English football - the future?

7/29/2019 English football - the future?

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ElliotFoster

WhatIwoulddotoimprovethefast-dying

Englishsidetothebeautifulgamefrom

bottomtotopandwithallthingsin

between.

Englishfootball:thefuture?


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What do we have to do to improve English football do we go from the top-down as FAchairman Greg Dyke is suggesting or do we do the inverse and work from the bottom,perfecting the art of the next generation: grassroots?

Coaches, to me, from Premier League academies should be at parks and playing fields everyweekend looking visible. This then gives kids an incentive to perform in the knowledge that

their good showing COULD be recognised by somebody higher up in the pyramid.

Ill use St Georges Park as an example. The newly-built centre of excellence for Englishfootball, similar to Lilleshall when Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard were YTS atLiverpool and West Ham United respectively, has a number of coaches whose job it is toteach coaches at grassroots level how to teach and coach a group of youngsters hungry forsuccess, the stars of tomorrow.

Ive been involved in the bottom level of the pyramid for a number of years, not as a coach, amanager or indeed an official but as a spectator. Having the distance factor between myselfand what is going on has allowed me to realise and take note of the changes, thedeteriorations that have gone on in recent years at the very bottom, although I have at times,

through passion and desire to see our youngsters do well, allowed myself to cross that finewhite line.

Its not just the players ability at the bottom level but also the ability of their tutors - thecoaches - that needs improving.

Thats the way I see it, anyway; in order for our youngsters to be given opportunities at thetop level, their ability needs to improve starting at the bottom.

That said, many who Ive interacted with on social media, namely Twitter, have told meotherwise, many telling me their belief that youngsters, particularly British youngsters, cannotbe taught how to play and instead talent, hunger and desire is engrained in them, in their

genes.

Street football and football in general at the bottom level is being neglected nowadays;neglected in favour of the PlayStation, theXbox, the iPadand so on and so forth. Not eventhe reinvention of astro-turf pitches the new 3G surfaces on which the youngsters play isenough to increase participation levels.

In the UK now, there are several Goals Football centres; these facilities are there for ourchildren to use, to get the best out of themselves, to enjoy their football and ultimately toimprove but theres one problem: children are more interested in who they can buy toimprove their matchday squad on FIFA than they are about improving their own skills and forthat reason more adults take advantage of the facilities available.

That, for me, isnt how it should be.

Now Im not for a second saying that adults should be banned from such amenities. I am,however, saying that there needs to be a bribe, an incentive to get our kids back in to thebeautiful game, to get them playing with a ball again rather than seeing how much moneythey have to outlay to purchase Messi for their fully-customised favourite teams squad.

Kids in the junior football leagues arent in any way improving their talent, skills or abilitybecause the majority of teams are being coached and managed by Joe public, a run-of-the-mill 9 to 5 working Dad, in many cases.

Many parents take on the role of coach or manager because they want to help the children to

do well and you can only admire them for that but the fact is that its not working, notanymore.


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At the ages of five and six, when our kids were participating in the local summer soccercamp, wanting to kick a football and enjoy themselves without a care in the world, beingcoached by a teammates Dad on a Saturday or Sunday morning would suffice because theycould offer guidance and the children would take it in as gospel, abide by it and use it to tryand make an impression, to be picked ahead of their best mate in the squad for the next game.

But now, at an age when the kids who a few years ago were five and six going to summercamps, being coached on Saturdays and Sundays by a parent, thats not enough. They cannow think for themselves and the guidance from a volunteer, so to speak, doing the coachingfor the kids enjoyment is no longer needed. What is needed though is the guidance of a fullyqualified UEFA/FIFA coach who can take the children, the once-football fanatic youngsterswho are now more interested in playing FIFA to the next level.

My theory is to assign a FIFA or UEFA qualified coach and there are just about enough ofthem to every grassroots side on an opt-in/opt-out basis. That way, if a parent (coach) feelsthey arent getting their ideas through to the children, he has a back up. That back up is awell-respected, authoritative figure who will be listened to. The children are more likely totake in whats said that way.

Not only will it be of help to the kids but it will also be of help to the coaches, those whowork so hard to help the kids succeed but at the same time fail to get their points across.

Last year the FA voted to shake-up juvenile football and from 2014-15 it will be mandatoryfor under-11s and under-12s to play nine-a-side games. But despite grants from the FootballFoundation, schools and boys clubs are reporting they are struggling to meet the cost ofconverting 11-a-side pitches and buying the smaller goals needed for these games. Changingage group football without providing the facilities for it suggests a lack of joined up thinkingat the FA.

Academies nowadays, in the Premier League in particular, seldom produce players talented

enough to be able to make that leap from u18 level or u21 level to the bench of the first-teamand ultimately to starting games for the clubs that they have represented while at an academy.

Manchester United, twenty-time champions of England and a club with a massive trophycabinet filled with a magnificent 69 trophies, have over the years become synonymous withthe idea of blooding youngsters: starting them from the bottom and making them in to first-team regulars.

While Manchester has been a hotbed for producing talent on the proverbial conveyor belt fora long, long time now, other clubs are beginning to recognise the benefits that the mostdecorated club in the history of the English game are reaping from the seeds that theyvesown over the years and are thankfully following that example.

Take Southampton: a club who were, after their relegation from the Premier League in the2004/05 campaign following a final day defeat, in freefall. They went into administration andwere relegated again, this time in to League One. It was away from the top flight, in theChampionship and League One that their stars, whove since moved on to, without disrespect,bigger and better things, began to flourish. The Saints made a bad start to life in the secondtier of English football with the emergence of Theo Walcott, a pacey, forthright, forward-looking central striker, seemingly the only cause for optimism.

How times change, eh?

Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, two products of Southamptons much-revered

youth academy, on sparkling performances, both earned themselves moves to Arsenal, whilethere was a young Welshman by the name of Gareth Bale who then went on to earn himself amove to the other club in North London, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenals arch rivals.


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That wasnt the end of the fortune for Southampton, though, as although there have beenturbulent times since their relegation to the Championship nine years ago, they still continueto produce players from their youth setup and have now returned to the Premier League - on28 April 2012, a 40 home win over Coventry City secured the club's return to the promisedland.

Luke Shaw, now regular left-back for Saints, came through their academy and plays week inweek out against some of the best strikers in the world. That was under the tutelage of twomanagers: now-Reading manager Nigel Adkins and Mauricio Pochettino, an overseasmanager who proves that there is a balance that can be reached between the number of Britishyoungsters and foreign imports. Calum Chambers has also come through the Saints academyin the last 12 months.

Theres one club who show that its not impossible to do the right thing.

For clubs such as the aforementioned Southampton its a case of not having the bottomless pitof funds or being backed by a Russian billionaire or a Sheikh which forces them to workwithin themselves, work with what they have.

It only works in certain quarters, though, that philosophy.

Its clubs like Liverpool who just get the balance wrong. They do their fair share of bloodingin terms of bringing the homegrown youngsters up from their academy to the first team, withat least eight British players coming through in the last six years. Are eight players enough?No. Thats the right side of that balance at least theyre giving some the opportunity tomake it on to the glitz and glamour stage of the Premier League.

The wrong side of that balance, and this, for me, is the most important side, is that the numberof local talents being brought through is being offset by the number of academy kids fromelsewhere, from overseas, being brought in and played at academy level, limiting the chances

that the British youngsters get.

In recent years, Liverpool have sent scouts, mainly to Spain, to assess the ability of overseasyoungsters. Quite obviously, without needing to employ a rocket scientist, as has been shownat tournaments of late both at first-team and youth level, their players have a more technicaledge about them than ours. Thats what the Premier League has become about now: flair,finesse and technique, leaving behind those without those qualities to rot.

Dani Pacheco was one of 11 overseas players included in Liverpools 16-man squad to playin a reserve-team game against Manchester United. Those players being Dean Bouzanis,Daniel Ayala, Chris Mavinga, Nikola Saric, Victor Palsson, Alex Kacaniklic, Vincent Weijl,Martin Hansen, Jordi Brouwer, Emmanuel Mendy and Nikolaj Kohlert. Only one of the 11

foreign imports went on to make a first-team appearance for the Reds and that was now-Norwich City defender Daniel Ayala who spent last season on loan at Nottingham Forest inthe Championship.

The worse thing is that up until a fortnight ago before hemoved to AD Alcorcon in the Spanish second divisionon a permanent deal Dani Pacheco was the onlysurvivor, of the overseas players, from that squad fouryears ago.

We all expected Pacheco to go back to Spain, hishomeland, at some point during his career after upping

sticks and leaving Baras La Masia setup in 2007 to


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join Liverpool. I bet nobody predicted that he would leave the UK for a Spanish second tierteam though.

2010 seemed to be the year in which many though Pacheco would kick on; he won theGolden Boot award at the European u19 Championships with La Roja while playingalongside such talents as Thiago Alcantara, Sergio Canales and Iker Muniain of Athletic

Bilbao. He never. He stayed in that Liverpool youth setup, stagnant, making no progressiontowards becoming a first-team regular.

This is just one player that were talking about but the saddest thing is that we could well betalking about any number of youngsters who were sold the idea of being given the platform toshine in the Premier League, convinced by inadequate coaches to up sticks, leave families inmany cases and come to where the grass is greener. Theyve been sold the idea that thePremier League is the ultimate finishing school.

A question: why do clubs pay for foreign talent when nine tenths of it doesnt make itanyway?

Why not invest the money that they spend on that foreign talent in to the grassroots in order toproduce better homegrown talent?

Homegrown a word which in its true sense in fact makes no sense at all. Not in the eyes ofthe Premier League hierarchy, anyway.

The Premier League rulebook states that clubs cannot name more than 17 non-homegrownplayers aged over 21. For example some clubs will have a squad list of 23 because they mayhave 17 over 21 non-homegrown players.

Currently, at least eight of the 25-man squad at a Premier League club aged over 21 have tobe home-trained. Dyke, in his speech, suggested that persuading the Premier League to beef

up its homegrown rule is a possibility.But what exactly is a homegrown player?

To me, a player classed as homegrown has to have been born in the UK and brought throughany academy in the UK.

However, thats only the opinion of myself not the powers-that-be, the Premier League.Officials at the top league in England believe, despite it being patently obvious that theirbelief is wrong, that a homegrown player is a player of any nationality who has been part ofan academy in the UK for three years prior to making a first-team debut.

Jack Wilshere and Ross Barkley look to be the only glimmers of hope in terms of homegrown

talent for the England national team. Two players, that is, since the emergence of WayneRooney over 10 years ago. So I ask: why is it that we as a nation are producing so few world-beaters in England?

Look at Spain: a nation which prior to the 2008 European Championships was unheralded forits ability to bring through, blood and produce homegrown talent. Its youth sides are winningevery competition there is to win at international level while its seniors are wiping the floorwith the competition thanks to their carpet-like, possession-keeping, tiki-taka football style.

Allowing players to develop is the responsibility of the countrys number one domesticcompetition, the Premier League. This isnt happening for one reason or another and I thinkits down to coaching, personally.


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Its the problem of the FA to produce coaches adequate enough to develop players to be betterthan they are when they join academies and it seems that the FA, in that respect, arent doinga part of their job. Greg Dyke, the FA chairman who issued a speech to the national presswhich prompted me to write this dossier, can directly affect that side of the bargain. That sideof the bargain makes for tearful reading.

At present, the numbers are damning. While Spain has 12,720 UEFA A level coaches andGermany 5,500, England has just 1,161. At Pro Licence level England has 203 coaches, Spain2,140 and Germany more than 1,000.

You only have to look at the Premier League to expose and highlight the failures of coachesand the mediocre record of English football as a whole when it comes to educating coaches.

Six managers in the elite of English football took their Pro-Licence qualifications in Scotland.That was as many as actually took the same qualification in England. Three of the sixmanagers who took their licences in Scotland are in charge at three clubs who wound up inthe top five of last seasons Premier League table. They were Andr Villas-Boas of Spurs,David Moyes of Manchester United and Chelseas Jose Mourinho.

Foreign imports are monopolising the transfer market, with 75 per cent of deals done thissummer involving non-British players. Only 32 per cent of players starting in Premier Leaguematches last season were English and that proportion looks set to dwindle further.

To put that in to perspective, just 19 of the 273 transfers in this summers window involvedEnglish players.

Foreign influence at the top level was evident as early as the 1920s. In the period between1924 and 1928 one per cent of the breakdown of nationalities in the top division was foreignand that number has gradually increased. Two seasons ago, the 2011/2012 campaign, thepercentage of foreign imports was at its second highest level since the invasion began, with

the previous season being top of the table with over half (51%) of the top division in Britain,the Premier League, being dominated by overseas players.

Premier League clubs are focusing their attention beyond the British Isles. Three-fifths ofsignings came from abroad, compared with two-fifths over the previous two summerwindows.

They say British players are at premium prices and you have to pay over the odds to signthem for your club but of the summer window not one of the top ten transfer fees wasoutlayed on a Briton.

Manchester City, Chelsea and Spurs were in that top ten list more than once, covering sevenof the ten spots in the top ten transfer fees, with the other three being paid by Liverpool,Manchester United and Arsenal as they signed Mesut zil on the final day for a staggering42.4million (50million).

The total net spend of Premier League clubs has increased for four of the last five years. In2009, the net spend of clubs was just 69.9million and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Itcontinued to increase to 206.6million in 2010 before decreasing to 139.3million in 2011.However, those figures pale in to insignificance when realisation hits that the net spend thissummer of all 20 Premier League clubs was a ghastly 397.48million

This transfer window was dominated by foreign imports, as Ive previously said, withSpaniards being the most popular of the newcomers from overseas for the third summer in arow.


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British players are being left out in the cold in favour of more technical, flair players to playin the now flair-friendly Premier League.

As a result of this, I say the loan system needs a big overhaul, review and revamp.

Currently, Premier League clubs can take on loan no more than four players a season and can

lend as many players as they like. While loans have proved a way for English players to gainexperience, there is a flip side, a side seldom highlighted: the side that our youngstersopportunities are restricted when clubs take on loan an overseas player.

Aly Cissokho was brought in at Liverpool on a season-long loan deal with the option to buyto provide competition for a complacent Jos Enrique. It seems to have worked, with Enriquestepping up his game since the ex-Lyon man was ruled out for six weeks with ankle ligamentdamage.

However, prior to Cissokhos arrival on Merseyside from Valencia, Liverpool had a young,hungry full-back in Jack Robinson ready to step in as Rodgers saw fit, when Enrique made ablunder.

Robinson is an England u21 international and has been yet another victim of the foreigninvasion, being forced away from the top level to ply his trade in the Championship atBlackpool in order to get first-team football.

Warrington-born Robinson, 20, isnt the only promising young England player forced out onloan in favour of a foreign counterpart; take Josh McEachran. His experience sums up

everything Dyke and the England managerRoy Hodgson are worried about. Groomed byChelsea from the age of seven, he played inthe Champions' League aged 17 and was beinghailed as one of England's brightest young

talents; England's, despite having two Scottishparents, because he appeared destined for thevery top. At the end of that season, with 17first-team appearances to his name,McEachran was named the club's YoungPlayer of the Year and signed a long-term

contract along with full-back Ryan Bertrand, about whom a similar story could be written.

To cut that story short, McEachran is now 20, has won caps for England in four different agegroups but has played a mere six more Premier League games, gone on loan to Swansea Cityand Middlesbrough and has not been given a Chelsea squad number this season. Themidfielder therefore seems certain to be sent back to the Championship once fully fit and

remains far away from a place in the England senior team that once seemed to be his destiny.

Theyre just two examples and I could continue until the cows come home but you get theidea.

Including under-21 squads and scholars, Chelsea have 75 contracted footballers over the ageof 16 on their books; Manchester United and Tottenham have 74 each and Manchester Cityno fewer than 82.

When manager at Bristol Rovers, the vastly experienced once-Reading manager SteveCoppell, now director of football at Crawley Town, described the loan system as fatteninglambs for slaughter.


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"Talented youngsters who can't get a game in the Premier League clubs first-team or reservesare coming here, getting some real value added, then being sold on at benefit to [the parent]clubs. These youngsters would have come anyway, for free."

Coppell rightly raises the issue that the majority of footballers do it not for the money(although it is nice) but simply for the enjoyment, the willingness, the want to do what they

love to do and the want to succeed.

Lets get back to the foreign imports and while were at it attack another issue which I feelneeds addressing: the work permit system.

Chelsea ripped the signing of Brazilian Willian from under the noses of their London rivalsSpurs and his signing depended on him being granted a work permit to play in the PremierLeague, as it would have had he signed for Spurs.

At present, only 70 per cent of players who are brought in to the Premier League from outsideof the European Union whose transfers hinge on their work permit application being acceptedmeet the standard requirements. Thirty per cent of players granted permits dont meet that

criteria and get in on appeals.

Dyke thinks too many of the foreign players in England are average and these not theRobin van Persies or Eden Hazards are the problem that blocks opportunities for Englishtalent.

Going slightly off-topic because he never required a work permit, Arsenal signed YayaSanogo from French Ligue 2 side Auxerre this summer. Hes a 22-year-old French youthinternational who has represented France at u16, u17, u19 and u20 levels who is in hisinfancy as an u21 international with only two caps to his name. My point is that theyvebrought him in on a free transfer and are paying him a substantial wage. Thats fair enough ifits what Wnger wants to do but I wont have that there is not a young British striker at

Arsenals academy who can do as good a job as Sanogo, if not better.

Maybe Marouane Chamakh is a better example. In a piece which former Liverpool and AstonVilla man Stan Collymore wrote forBleacher Reportin the wake of Dykes speech, thepassionate talkSPORTradio presenter wrote this: Take Marouane Chamakh. Are you tellingme there isn't a teenage kid in Britain somewhere who couldn't have been developed into abetter striker for Arsenal than he was? I could go out and find one tomorrow, coach himmyself and save the Gunners a lot of money. There are countless other examples the likesof Bebe and Anderson at Manchester United among them.

I would love to see a quota introduced whereby you'd still see an Arsenal team boasting thelikes of Mesut zil, Lucas Podolski, Thomas Vermaelen, Wojciech Szczsny and Olivier

Giroud but around them six homegrown players would be getting their chance to develop.Besides having a quota of more homegrown players than overseas players in a starting XI, Iwould like to see a 10 per cent levy placed on all transfer fees with that money then beinginvested in to the bottom level, the game of grassroots.

England u21 manager Gareth Southgate, appointed after the sacking of Stuart Pearcefollowing the poor showing of our next generation in the European Championships thissummer, highlighted Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur as two clubs who give achance to their youngsters, naming Steven Caulker (now at Cardiff City), Danny Welbeckand the again-loaned-out Tom Carroll as successful examples of how both clubs aremeticulous about player development.

Ross Barkley, another player with huge potential who has been loaned out twice in the last 21months by Everton to Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United respectively, made his England


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senior debut in September, coming on as a substitute in a 4-0 win against Moldova atWembley.

A player who joined Everton at the age of 11, 19-year-old Barkley was part of the squadwhich helped England to win the European u17 Championships with a 2-1 victory over Spain.He scored two goals in that tournament and is the shining light of the class of 2010. Connor

Wickham, Josh McEachran and new England u21 captain Andr Wisdom were all part of thatsquad, the squad who were victorious three years agoagainst a nation who seem to be able to do no wrong attournament level.

It was evident as soon as Barkley stepped on the hallowWembley turf to take his first touch as a full internationalthat he would do well in an England shirt it fitted like atailor-made suit.

His abundance of natural movement was displayed when England didnt have possession ashe moved eloquently in to the right positions, often without appearing to have to think about

it.

When England were in possession, Barkley showed, in spurts, just why he is rated so highlyby his parent club, bringing to the table all the ingredients to rustle up a top player two-footedness, bold intentions, shooting threat and an explosiveness which would worry even thestrongest of defences.

Greg Dyke has set the targets to win the 2022 World Cup and to reach the semi-finals of nextyears World Cup in Brazil. With Englands qualification for next summers tournamenthanging in the balance on the back of a 0-0 draw away to Ukraine, I wonder whether that ispossible. Two wins at Wembley would see us over the line but on the back of theperformance against Ukraine in Kyiv, its difficult to see where there is any firepower within

the national team.

2022: well Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and the like will all be sat at home watchinglike you and I, as fans when this tournament comes around and as the so-called goldengeneration fade out, its time for the next generation to step up, be counted and allow Englandto be seen as serious contenders on the international stage once more.

How you may ask?

Well, heres what Id do. I have a starting eleven, playing 4-3-3, in my mind that I think couldgive us the success that weve so craved for 47 years. Here is that team:

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