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After the Chairman of the FA David Bernstein’s honourable, but ultimately doomed, move to suspend the FIFA Presidential election this week, English football finds itself at its lowest ebb.
The world’s oldest football institution, the creator the game’s laws, now stands alone from its counterparts on the European continent and around the world, simply because of its vocal (and correct) disapproval of how the organisation was being run.
The head of the Argentinean FA angrily proclaimed that England would only ever receive its vote to host a future World Cup if Britain cedes the Falkland Island, the scene of a brief but bloody war between the two nations in 1982. The head of the Spanish FA, Angel Villar Llona, snapped at the FA to “stop telling lies” and to “leave the FIFA family alone”.
Numerous other nations chipped in to record their anger at the thought of delaying a one-horse race until there was even one other viable contender for the presidents.
But the real proof of England’s transition to pariah was in the result of the vote regarding the election, with the Bernstein’s motion being thrown out by 186 votes to 17.
Admittedly, the furious reaction of FIFA’s delegates towards Bernstein says more about the disgraceful desire to maintain the corrupt status-quo within football’s governing body than the worth of the motion to suspend the presidential vote. The FA’s bid was courageous, and deserves praise for attempting to bring about change in FIFA’s organisation in the face of clear opposition.
But the fact remains that England now finds itself a diplomatic outcast in world football, the biggest implication of which is that we can almost certainly rule out seeing England host a World Cup any time in the next 30 years.
The next three tournaments have been allocated to Brazil, Russia and Qatar, with the fourth in 2026 set to return to Asia, and the cash-strapped FA will be loathe to launch another expensive bid for the Cup while current anti-English attitudes remain.
In the short term, meanwhile, any hope of England making manoeuvres in its own self interest with FIFA will have little to no chance of going ahead.
And so with the state of affairs off the pitch in a perilous state, let us look to affairs on it, as Fabio Capello attempts to rebuild the team after the shambles that was England’s 2010 World Cup campaign.
After being torn apart and embarrassed by the Germans in the second round of last year’s tournament, Capello is seeking to introduce new young talent into the national squad.
There are undoubtedly exciting new prospects in the side: Jack Wilshere’s attacking midfield play brings happy memories of a young Paul Scholes to mind, while Manchester City’s Joe Hart looks to have made the goalkeeper position his own. But beyond these bright sparks, the usual concerns about the state of the Three Lions team remain.
Away from the first eleven there is a worrying lack of depth (understandable, given that just only 38% of registered players in the Premier League were qualified to play for England last season), and the players that are in the squad for tournaments are more often than not exhausted after a grueling 10-month season. On top of that, the huge weight of public expectation on the team to bring home some glory to a success-starved nation for the first time since 1966 means that anything less than the winning of a trophy results in the team being furiously lambasted by the unforgiving British press.
“Football’s coming home”, sing English supporters whenever the Three Lions play. With English football in its current state, however, it looks as though those ever-faithful supporters should consider marching to a different tune.
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