After a terrible showing in the world cup the question is where do England go from here.
I think there is a 2 stage solution to the problem, both interlinked with each other, Foreigners & Salaries.
Lets look at the foreign imput first. An alarming statistic released last week shows that of the current Premiership players, 50.57% are foreigners, 43% are English, 6.43% other British nationalities. So the Premiership has become the honey pot for foreign players out to make a quick buck thus stiffling our own home grown talent. Its no coincidence that since the innaugaration of the Premiership in 1992 the performance of the national team has been in steady decline ever since.
The last major championship prior to the Premiership coming into existence was Italia 90, when England reached the semi finals and eventually finished fourth. Taking a look at the major championships since shows our progress.
USA 94 England fail to qualify (even though 12 teams from Europe went through via qualification), France 98 England qualify (from 14 european teams)and lose in 2nd round. Japan 02, England qualify (14 European teams again) and lose in quarter finals to Brazil. Germany 06, England once again qualify from 13 European teams and lose in quarter finals.
Now lets take a look at the European championships, 1992 England qualify with 8 teams and go out in group stage, Euro 96 qualify as hosts and reach semi finals. Euro 2000 16 teams qualify and England go out in group stages. Euro 2004 England qualify and go out in Quarter finals (Which coincides with the start of the so called ‘golden generation’)
Taking a look at the recent world cup squad and leaving out the starting eleven, of the remaining squad mambers only 5 had played 30 or more Premiership games last season, 4 had less than 20 appearances and we all know about Walcott.
Its the same tale with the Under 21 squad,taking the last couple of seasons into account 24 players have Premiership experience, of which 14 ammased double figures last season, 11 of the squad have no Premiership experience at all.
This all looks good and well on paper but if you single out the big 4 teams in the top flight where experience of big euro games and finals will happen
Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man utd, only 5 of their players make the squad with a combined total of 29 Premiership appearances between them.
So as you can see the facts and figures dont look good for England at the moment.
My solution to the problems is twofold, one is to limit the foreign imports to 5 per team (when i say foreign i mean non british players) and the second step is to introduce a 4 teared salary cap whereby the Premiership has a limit of 40k per week, the Championship has a limit of 10k per week, League 1 2k per week, league 2 1k per week. This would deter a lot of foreign mercaneries from coming over to the Premiership for a big pay day and enable the younger talent to come through quicker and gain big game experience.
The money saved by the clubs can be poured back into the community to help develop young talent and possibly even mean lower admission prices for the top teams so that the prawn sandwich brigade is reduced and the Playstation generation will start to come back to football and take it up as a recreation facility.
Obviously there will have to be new EEC legislation put in place, but with UEFA director Sep Blater also going down the same road, it could well happen.
To enter our exclusive competition, click here
Funny reading an article from Martin Jol today where he says that in his era 1980’s with WBA he was one of about 10 non British players in the then first division. What the foriegn players have done is lift the standard of the game overall, there is some merit in the numbers per team but not the salary cap as that would put us back in the 80’s in terms of the domestic competition.
i agree but some of the wages that players get is just stupid come on 70 grand to kick a football its crazy but i like the idea of the limit on foreign players but didnt they used to have that in the premiership anyway??
They did until European Laws came into effect.
I can’t agree with you about foreign imports.
You may be right we have underperformed since 1990 – but you don’t look at pre 1990.
1986 – only made the Quarter Finals, yes we all know about the hand of god, but we did go out at the same stage as 2002 and 2006.
1982 – We went out in the second round after coming runners up in our group to Morocco. We only held the 2nd spot over Poland by goal difference!
1974 and 1978 – as we all know not there.
I am not bringing England down. I think we are a talented footballing nation, and we have more than enough potential to win the world cup and european championships.
Our problem is our insular mentality. Your post kind of proves it. We are now talking about if too many foreigners are styfling our game. Why aren’t we doing the same in other leagues.
That is the problem for me – not that we have too many foreigners, but that we don’t make up the foreigners in other leagues teams.
Think about it. Major English players abroad. I can think of Beckham, Woodgate and Hatgreaves. Maybe there are others – but I challenge you to come up with a decent list.
There seems to be an attitude here that if you don’t make it here, you don’t make it. Here in Hull we are happy to bring down talents like Duffy from Scotland, how many Englishmen even try to get selected by Scottish sides, or over the water by Dutch sides?
Hargreaves came through the Bayern Munich academy – don’t tell me other English passport holders couldn’t do the same.
The two leagues most people consider to be the best in the world are Spain’s La Liga and England’s Premiership. Compare Spaniards in the Premiership to Englishmen in la Liga.
Look at Portugal – Runner up EC2004 – 4th WC 2006, most of their players ply their trades in other leagues. there is a link between them having players all over Europe, and them changing from the team that finished bottom of our WC1986 group.
This isn’t a problem which can be sorted over night. We need a mentality change. We need to start playing by other country’s rules.
Overthrow the FA, by force if necessary. Are they responsible to anyone? Easy for them to sit back and point the finger at Sven, isn’t it? Mclaren is the easy option for them.. incidentally I give him two bad friendly results before the rumblings of discontent start. I may be wrong but no sweeping revolution will happen after his appointment. Allardyce, O’Neill (personal problems notwithstanding), decent guys who tell it like it is and have a method of their own got nowhere in the selection process.
By the way, what really fecking makes me despair is we couldn’t beat a team who couldn’t score in normal time, and missed penalties like we used to. Except we missed more than usual. And if we’d got to the semis and gone out? There’d still have been an inquest. In the papers opinion, Sven would still have been crap. There’d have been someone else other than Ronaldo to slag off. It would have been anyone else’s fault but our own. I digress..
It’s nothing to do with ‘foreigners’. We don’t have the players for a world class team, and the ones who could remotely be described as near world class underperformed. And Owen Hargreaves our best player against Portugal: one who’s role is to destroy play, to break up.. nuff said.