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There was really no surprise in England’s ejection from the World Cup with a thumping 4-1 defeat by a far better German side. True there was the stupidly disallowed Frank Lampard goal which would have bought a 2-2 scoreline at half time, on such decisions games can turn. It is also true that under such circumstances the Team playing “catch up” by attacking will inevitably leave themselves open to counter attacks so that in the end, the score line may flatter a bit but that is about all one can say in mitigation.

The reality is that it was not just this game, England at no time during this Tournament looked like World Beaters, more like a bunch of Donkeys though, that may be insulting to Donkeys, they are at least useful, this bunch of over paid, over hyped losers are not. In fact, so poor was their performance, that even if they beat Germany by some miracle, they would never beat Argentina. Capello’s news conference was a somewhat painful one and to be frank, ‘looking’ at the England Manager and replacing him, yet again, hardly seems the answer because we have been here far too many times before. If we want to avoid this again in the future or at least change the way we do things in the future because clearly this is just not working, it is not sacking the Manager that needs to be done, we need really radical change.

Attitude is the Main Problem

I was decorating and I couldn’t be bothered to watch the England Germany match so instead, I was listening to the third One Day Test Match between England and Australia. England won the first two so winning this one would give them 3 Tests out of the 5 to be played and therefore the series. England’s bowlers did very well but, this Australian side is much depleted by injuries so poor old Ricky Ponting has a big job on his hands to get any kind of a result but this match produced another example of the poor mental attitude of English players.

Australia who batted first, posted a low score and England in reply were coasting to victory, only needing 213 and were 185-3 when the batting collapsed. In the end Tim Bresan for England kept his head and bought it home but a match that should have been a doddle was a close run thing. I admire the Australians, they are gritty buggers and keep going, even under very adverse circumstances, all England’s sports players could learn from them. What my Father said about too much money ruining any sport, rings very true.

Money Is the Root of Poor Performances

I have no doubt that the members of the England Squad would have wanted to do well for their Country but let’s face it, money alone says that they can’t. Not in just the obvious way of saying that they are overpaid and therefore lack the personal hunger for success. Simply because the Premier League is a big money machine where even taking a 6 week break mid-winter would be treated with horror by the “Big Businesses” that own these Clubs, Sky and the other Media businesses reliant for their sales on Football and given the chance, would wish it was 52 weeks a year. But this too has its problems, most players will play almost 40 League games and in addition, there will be the various Cup trophies from the FA to the European Championship plus the Country Qualification Internationals.

All of these World and European Tournaments are held in the Summer, June typically. The English season starts in August and ends in May, all the players are both mentally and physically drained by the time they get to any Tournament. The FA could do a lot worse than talk to the English Cricket Board in terms of the ‘player fatigue’ they have experienced with the combination of their Summer Playing Season in the UK and the overseas Winter Tours, they have had spectacular failures too.

You can limit the number of foreign players in any team but frankly, that is not the answer, we need a far more radical solution.

An Idea

We need a living, breathing league football club to act as the “England Academy”.  Although I’m not sure of the legal structure, it may need to be owned by a Charity or a Co-operative, take lads from very young and make them subject to a binding contract until say age 22-23. These players and however “gifted” would be paid a very modest regular salary and everyone is paid the same however, whilst they may never ‘own’ the club, any “profits” from whatever source, they will own and will be split equally between every member of the Club whether Player, Coach, Groundsman, Steward or whatever.

The aim would be to buy a Club in say the NPower League One or Two for as little cash as possible and them build it up until it was in the Premiership and qualified for a European Competition, this will take some years and by the time you reach that stage, the club will have 4 or 5 complete squads. For say the England Under 21s, you take one of the squads, give them England shirts, they are now the England Under 21 Team.

Lots of Details

Utopian dreams don’t work without a lot of common sense so as an example, what you don’t want is this club being bled white of it’s best young talent. A daft 18 year old offered an income of thousands of Pounds a week… Hence the locked in contract until age 22-23 but, you also have to allow for greedy Parents going through a divorce and talented ‘malcontent s’, why does Nicholas Anelka come to mind ? If someone doesn’t want to stay with you, why keep them as a prisoner ? There must be escape (actually reject), clauses. The Club would get the transfer fee but also and why not, half their wages plus 50% of the profit on any transfer fees the buyer got for selling them on in the next 5 years.

Sure, all of this may be a very silly idea but, we really do need to change the culture and circumstances if we want different outcomes for the National Squad in the future.