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England fails at major competitions when it comes to the crunch, despite being a nation of 52 million, where football is the national sport.
Scratch games of football are everywhere.
Not only is professional football spread across the length and breadth of the country through the EPL, three divisions below the EPL and the conference, but there are also around 30 million fans attending these matches every season.
So why the failure at the international level?
Speaking of the records, England has won one World Cup (on home soil) and on one other occasion, they were placed fourth.
They have never won the European football championships, and nor have they ever been runner-up. They finished fourth in 1968, and were losing semi-finalists in 1996.
Let me offer a suggestion; England have spent a lot of time arrogantly or naively (depending on point of view) believing that because they invented football, they had nothing to learn from foreigners.
What they forgot was that just because you invented the wheel, you couldn’t only just use it to push around with a stick.
How else do you explain a mediocre coach like Mr Yorkshire Pudding, our Kevin Keegan being appointed England’s manager 11 years ago?
So England may have invented the football wheel, but other nations created and developed it to another level.
While there comes along English footballers with flair, panache and imagination, I believe Stuart Pearce would have got more Valentine day cards from English fans than Glen Hoddle.
Speaking of Hoddle, here’s an article by him only last year
Glen explains what England hasn’t learnt well according to me. This quote from his article gives some insight:
“The biggest weakness in the players being developed in England is that they do not play with their heads up. From a young age, on big pitches, they are used to getting their head down and dribbling past four, five, six players.
“When I was 15, my dad took me to play in a men’s league because I was taking liberties in games and running too far and dribbling with the ball. I tried it in the adult league game once and wriggled past four players. One of the men came up to me and said: ‘If you ever do that again son, we’ll break your legs’.”
It then goes on and gives great insight into English football and the reasons for its failure at international level and what should be done to fix it.
Funnily enough, its eerily similar to Australia and where we are coming and going.
The difference is that although we don’t have the history and the depth of English football, I believe we are better off.
England is tied down by the weight of that same football history. Compared to them we are football lightweights historically. However for me, that is an advantage not a hindrance.
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