Burton can end England’s mediocre continuum

Liam Hoare

“You cannot imagine that a federation of the size of England has no headquarters and no grounds to develop their whole football education. It is crucial.” - - Arsene Wenger

Chelsea was the first team in the history of the Premiership to field a team containing eleven foreign nationals. Arsenal followed suit a few seasons later. These instances were not necessarily the start of it all, but they marked important moments in the grand decline of the England national team and its youth system.

For whatever reason, since we produced the seemingly self-styled ‘golden generation’ of players like Lampard and Gerrard, England have failed to bring through any real talent in good quantity. Theo Walcott and Wayne Rooney are perhaps the only two shining stars to flower in the last five years. Unfortunately for the English, national teams need eleven world-class players, not just a couple.

Now clubs have resorted to scouting the continent for young, promising players to drop into their own academies. After all it’s in their interests to do so. Foreign players are cheaper to buy, demand less in wages, work harder and ultimately have become more talented.

This signifies a failure on the part of the English to produce the players that clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea feel are good enough to join their ranks. It is therefore important that the FA take charge of this issue, as the guardians of the English game and the national team.

The National Football Centre at Burton has been a project at least six years in the making, going back to 2002. The FA’s indecisiveness and blind incompetence must meant that the project has essentially been on hold ever since. Debate has raged over such things as the location, not being near London for instance; and the cost, particularly after they ploughed £750 million into the New Wembley and handed Fabio Capello a £6 million per annum contract.

The French FA had it right about twenty years ago, and the English FA ought to take their model on board: Clairefontaine, the location for the National Technical Centre of France, could best be described as a factory through which their best academy moulds, develops and spews out some of the world’s greatest talents: Henry, Saha, Gallas and Anelka to name just a few. The academy opened its doors in the late 1980s; just ten years later they won the World Cup (1998) and the European Championship (2000).

France has nine elite academies dotted throughout its beautiful, lush sprawl. On the other hand England fails to have but one of these amazing centres; perhaps this is their downfall. The simple fact of the matter is that the NFC (National Football Centre) is an absolute necessity. These football factories are perhaps the best solution England has to end its mediocre continuum.

But it’s not just about producing a new class of potential world-beaters; the clubs and the football associations have a duty to protect and nurture them. The 6+5 rule was proposed by Sepp Blatter as a means to force clubs to field domestic players in their sides. It is clear that the sheer numbers of foreign players in English clubs make it harder for Englishmen to fully develop and flourish. This rule would increase opportunities for domestic players to start in the first team.

Foreign internationals have without a doubt improved the quality of the Premier League. Without them it would have been almost impossible for English clubs to dominate the Champions League as they do today. Moreover foreign players have given England’s ordinary league football a new edge; it’s what Clive Tildsley describes so eloquently as ‘the old French swagger’.

But the fanciful foreign-driven free-flowing football fans see on a Saturday afternoon has come at the expense of the success of their own national team. It’s because they only play once or twice every three months that the fans forget its importance. They forget the power the team has to unite the fans of all clubs in following England to victory, and the joy the team gives when they achieve it.

Yet of course, without the victories England have been pushed to the sidelines; developing an irrelevancy that comes with the current mediocre continuum. The FA have to spend money to make money: they must build Burton and reform the system, in order to get the fans back on side. It will be costly of course, but the long term benefits will be a price worth paying for. Remember it took France just ten years to win that World Cup.

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