Kieran Lovelock argues England's World Cup bid is being staged at the expense of the long-term health of the national game.
Is the English FA desperate to host this event because they are worried they won't have a team capable of qualifying?
As good as the England national teams' short term prospects look under the astute leadership of Fabio Capello, a glimpse at the paucity of young talent on show at the Portsmouth versus Arsenal game the other evening should be sending tremors right through the FA's corridors of power of what lies ahead. For the first time in the history of English soccer, 22 players took to the field in a top division match, shown on live TV without a single home-grown player .Yet, the English FA, the custodians of the game tell the fans that their main priority is to get the 2018 World Cup to England! What a joke. Surely the FA's main priority and efforts should be to find the next generation of Lampard's, Gerrard's and Rooney's.
Just short of a decade ago England fans had reason to feel excited, as the spine of the Premiership was filled with young English players. The likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Ferdinand, Terry, Heskey, Owen and Ashley Cole were in their early twenties and were talked of as England's "Golden Age". There were also rumors of a teenage phenomenon called Wayne Rooney coming through the ranks at Everton, who would be the best of the lot. England fans were given a glimpse of this young team's true potential one warm September evening in Munich with the 5-1 annihilation of their old foe Germany, however the truth is with the odd exception it all now looks a false dawn.
How has it reached this stage? How can the country that gave birth to the game, that is truly soccer mad and prides itself in selling the Premiership as the best league across the world, end up with a televised match with no home grown players? The brutal reality that the English fans must face up to is simple, if the players that were coming off the production line were good enough they would be playing, but the horrible truth is they are not.
The FA would be better off taking the millions they promise to spend on security experts and tear gas to ensure the safety of the WAGS (players' wives and girlfriends) and the tourists in 2018, and funding centers of excellence across England by way of a national youth academy. How crazy is it that the English FA can find the money to front a bid and all that goes with it but can't find the cash to build the long talked about soccer academy centre of excellence? Just how short sited is this?
Once the academy is in place the first step for the FA should be to find the best developers of talent in the land and giving them the keys. Two names that come to mind are Arsene Wenger, the long term Arsenal manager who has built great teams through buying and then developing young players, and Jim Cassel who is the brains behind the fabled Manchester City youth academy, ridiculously moved sideways by Mark Hughes just over a year ago to bring in his own cronies. These are two men who have been there, seen it and done it when it comes to developing young players. How they go about it would be up to them, but the need for total support from the FA is crucial.
One would assume a detailed plan to change the long ball culture amongst ten and eleven year olds would be a good place to start along with the need to get coaches at all levels from the park to the Premiership adequately qualified.
Every England fan wants the World Cup to come home, but they want it there so they have a better chance to win it not just as the only way to participate. If you don't believe me, then just look north of the border to Scotland to see what awaits them if they don't produce their own talent. Or worse still look at the energy industry, England no longer has a strategy to produce their own and are now at the mercy of foreign suppliers and just how painful is that going to be for them!
