The State of the English Game

[Éperons]

Sammyspurs and I had a bit of a back and forth on the transfer thread about Spurs' "history" of fielding mostly British sides, while letting the likes of the Woolworths field sides with nary a Brit in the starting XI. My position is that Spurs will continue to create British players by virtue of its academy (which also homegrowns non-British players), but that the PL, as a top, top, triffic league, will persistently attract the best players around the globe, and those players may not always be British.

[…]

TL;DR: The players who are supposed to be bringing England glory (as well as the youths who should be getting exposure so that they can dethrone the likes of Terry, Lampard, etc.) can't even get into their club sides.

While killing time before #1882tfc, I picked up a copy of Soccernomics (the expanded and updated version of Why England Lose). As one can judge from the original title, Kuper and Szymański devote an entire chapter to wondering about England's "failure" in major tournaments, and they say that the above reason—English players are getting pushed out of starting gigs in the PL—is exactly wrong.

In fact, they argue that there are too many English players in the PL to help Team England. The PL is the most grueling club league, they argue, and so England persistently has players at tournaments who are terribly worn out in the summer. So though the English players benefit from being exposed to the best players in the world, they end up completely spent by the time the Cross of St. George comes calling. Kuper and Szymański encourage English players, in fact, to ply their club trade in more relaxed club leagues (specifically, the Croatian League).

Instead, they offer three reasons for England's "failure":

1. English players come almost exclusively (80% or so) from the working class, which is a shrinking class in England. Middle-class youths are ostracised from football and drift toward other sports, like cricket and rugby, etc. Hence the pool of possible English players is getting smaller as a proportion of the English population as a whole. Not until middle-class youths start becoming pro footballers will this change (see the US, which has a more substantial middle-class involvement in pro football development). So all the plans at St. George's Park will come to nought until it's ok for sons of businessmen and the like to play football professionally.

2. England is, by virtue of its insularity, technically behind western Europe, which shares footballing information far more freely. The disinclination of players to play outside of England and of the FA to choose England managers with lots of continental experience / who are non-English means that the growth is limited. It's a small old boys' club that, like an incestuous family, keeps expressing unhelpful, recessive genes and defects. In this way, Roy is a brilliant choice to manage England, because he actually has a continental pedigree (and, as a non-player, is not as locked into the back-slapping English network).

3. Given England's population and demographics, they should not expect to be winning trophies. Kuper and Szymański adoringly quote Gerrard, who argues that the English should instead view themselves as plucky underdogs, aiming to topple football powerhouses like Brazil and Argentina, while fighting over scraps with France and the rest.

I find it interesting that the first two points are variants of "football and footballers don't like education and are skeptical of intelligence".

 

[Blanchflower]

It's true that it's far more acceptable for middle class kids in other counties to become professional footballers, here you either play football or you work hard at school - rarely does anyone excel in both.