Perhaps it’s time to accept that English football just doesn’t have the talent to compete at the highest level. I’m going to be very un-PC here and say that most of the best young sportspeople in England are private school kids. That’s not because of some inborn athletic ability, but because private schools have the sports pitches, the facilities and the daily games and/or PE lessons that state school kids are missing. It’s not just in sport that private school and grammar school kids dominate; music seems to show a similar picture. The most successful recording artists tend to come from private or grammar schools, for the simple reason that they get daily singing sessions in the morning and have access to music instruction from an early age.
Unlike rugby, rowing, athletics, track cycling, yachting and other sports where Britain and indeed England succeed at the top level, football seems to be a bastion of the ‘working class’. The English players who do come through and play at foreign dominated clubs are the few who’ve had either the luck to have parents who’ve encouraged them and taken them to football clubs or are the rare gifted ones who grew up kicking a ball in the streets; I have a lot of admiration for sportspeople who can succeed with very little resources or coaching as a child, but the reality is that most can’t, and the myth of Brazilian and Argentinian kids growing up playing on the streets is exactly that; most of those players are middle class kids who grew up playing sports at school; at least in Argentina, where I’ve seen things myself, school sports provision is actually generally very good.
It seems to me that football is just not attracting the most talented young sportspeople. Talented sportspeople are often capable of succeeding in any sport; they have superior hand/foot-eye coordination and a natural athleticism and ‘trainability’. If those gifted young sportspeople, and there are undoubtedly enough of them, choose their specialist sport in their late teens, why would they choose football, other than for the money that the very few who get into a foreign dominated club can earn? They could play rugby with a real chance of winning a world cup, go rowing or running with a real chance of an Olympic gold, or indeed cycling? Money only motivates sportspeople who are already motivated to become successful; it doesn’t motivate a young teenager to spend every bit of spare time practicing his skills to reach the top. If it did, Jonny Wilkinson would have played football for England.
I saw a little of yesterday’s game, and not being a footie expert, what struck me very quickly (aside from the remarkable eyesight condition of linesman and ref) was that the England players seemed slow and laboured each time the Germans broke away to score; England’s defenders were quite simply not fast enough to get back into position in time; you don’t train that in at age 20-odd, you get fast when you’re a child.
If you want England to win football world cups, it’s time to give young state school kids their playing fields back.
Unlike rugby, rowing, athletics, track cycling, yachting and other sports where Britain and indeed England succeed at the top level, football seems to be a bastion of the ‘working class’. The English players who do come through and play at foreign dominated clubs are the few who’ve had either the luck to have parents who’ve encouraged them and taken them to football clubs or are the rare gifted ones who grew up kicking a ball in the streets; I have a lot of admiration for sportspeople who can succeed with very little resources or coaching as a child, but the reality is that most can’t, and the myth of Brazilian and Argentinian kids growing up playing on the streets is exactly that; most of those players are middle class kids who grew up playing sports at school; at least in Argentina, where I’ve seen things myself, school sports provision is actually generally very good.
It seems to me that football is just not attracting the most talented young sportspeople. Talented sportspeople are often capable of succeeding in any sport; they have superior hand/foot-eye coordination and a natural athleticism and ‘trainability’. If those gifted young sportspeople, and there are undoubtedly enough of them, choose their specialist sport in their late teens, why would they choose football, other than for the money that the very few who get into a foreign dominated club can earn? They could play rugby with a real chance of winning a world cup, go rowing or running with a real chance of an Olympic gold, or indeed cycling? Money only motivates sportspeople who are already motivated to become successful; it doesn’t motivate a young teenager to spend every bit of spare time practicing his skills to reach the top. If it did, Jonny Wilkinson would have played football for England.
I saw a little of yesterday’s game, and not being a footie expert, what struck me very quickly (aside from the remarkable eyesight condition of linesman and ref) was that the England players seemed slow and laboured each time the Germans broke away to score; England’s defenders were quite simply not fast enough to get back into position in time; you don’t train that in at age 20-odd, you get fast when you’re a child.
If you want England to win football world cups, it’s time to give young state school kids their playing fields back.
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