On Thursday night, England were knocked out of the football World Cup. Not unusual, any observer of World Cups since 1966 will tell you that England goes to a world cup full of hope, then gets knocked out. This then causes anguish and much gnashing of teeth. The difference this time was there was no expectations at all. However; grim frustration has set in. The English game is richer, than any other game on the world. It is regularly touted as a league that cannot be beaten, for excitement, atmosphere, marketing in general. This in contrast to the national team whose performances in the recent history of international have gone steadily downhill since 1966.
On Thursday Chris Waddle , former England winger articulated the frustration of a nation. The crux of his rant was that since the inception of the Premier league the England team has suffered, as the FA, the custodians of the English game have got richer. The original idea of the Premier league was to help make the England team better as fixture lists were meant to be cut. Instead the game has been flooded with high quality foreign players. This means players who are English qualified are not getting exposed to high quality, high pressure football. Unfortunately this has been happening for so long that the strength and depth of the English squad is so damaged that the poor tournament play will only continue.
Is this a grim view? Yes! But we have a blueprint for disaster and that is the Scottish game, Scotland regularly qualified for the world cup and produced great players. Now, Scotland are in crisis, their game is broke and this is due to the largesse of the 90's where Scotland was importing players and managers. Yes England that is the future and I am not sure whether it can be stopped.
