F.A.O Greg Dyke: England have always been Rubbish...

When new F.A Chairman Greg Dyke was presented to the media last week, he spent much of his first press conference bemoaning the falling number of Englishmen playing football in the Premier League.

"The real challenge for us looking forward is that we've gone from 70% English players in the Premier League to 30% and it's still falling. If that continues, we won't have a chance in hell in future tournaments. We have got to stop that decline and we've got to get more English players playing at the highest level."

Since his comments there has been a media frenzy, many football journalists have jumped at the chance to get behind this view and add their foreigner blaming opinions to the debate. The most prominent statistic used to highlight this lack of English talent, is the fact that when the PL was launched in 1992, 75 per cent of players were English and now it is down to just 32%.

Which explains England's glorious World Cup victory in 1994.

On the surface Greg Dyke’s comments might seem sensible, the sort of everyfan schtick you are likely to hear at the pub before a game. However if you think about it with any level of insight, the idea that the foreign talent in the Premier League is diminishing the quality of the England team is clearly and obviously not true.

If we look at the history of the England team, apart from a glorious aberration on home soil in 1966, they have actually always been pretty average. Even when the league was full of a near 100% Englishmen we were not in fact world beaters. There is an argument to say that since the influx of foreign born stars, the England team has actually got better. In the 70’s and 80’s England often didn't qualify for major tournaments, since the advent of the Premier League the England team have regularly qualified and been consistent in getting to the knock-out phases, before going out to the first good team they have come across.

The elephant in the room is that England does not produce enough players of the required quality to surpass their foreign colleagues, if they were good enough they would of course be first picks. The idea that limiting the foreign players in the league will increase the quality of English players is nonsense, if they cannot compete at club level against these players they are unlikely to be better at international level. Not forgetting that the knock on effect of such a move would not only reduce the quality of the League, but is also likely to reduce the interest from fans around the world.

So what is the problem?

The coaching and education of young players is the key to this problem, the standard of grass roots coaching in this country is simply appalling. England just doesn't compare to countries like Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil and even smaller nations. Grass roots football still has too much emphasis on kick and rush tactics, long balls and rewarding strength over technique. We have less qualified and professional coaches than these countries by a significant margin and have only just stopped our young kids from running around huge 11-a-side pitches at the age of ten!!

So next time an England team is being outplayed and knocked out at the first hurdle. Please remember, it is not the fault of the Dennis Bergkamp's, Eric Cantona’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s of this world. It is because we have only recently given up on our over reliance on prehistoric tactics and valuing strength over technique. England players also seem to show a genuine lack of composure, which manifests itself as our heroes being brave blood stained "warriors". Real composure and bravery is not a blood stained defeat, but risking a piece of skill or passing in a pressurised situation and not resorting to long ball tactics every time something goes wrong.

Quite simply, England need better players. Players with more quality and technique on the ball. Reducing the amount of good foreign players in the league will not improve this.

…And lets not get started on the fact that English players on the whole are scared to play abroad and generally seem to put a minimal amount of effort in to improve their game after they have “made it”.