Watching developments in English football can be a trying business, whether we are talking on or off the pitch. So it is characteristic that a week which brought a big step forward in manoeuvring a respected English voice on to the sport’s top table should also have featured a proposal from the boss of the Football Association that would, in my opinion, represent a significant backwards step both for the Premier League and the England team he is trying to strengthen.
First the good news: the installation of former Manchester United chief executive – now FA vice chairman – David Gill in the inner sanctum of FIFA’s Executive Committee (Exco) should transform the nature of the relationship between the world governing body and the oldest national association. Several fellow committee members might not like much of what Gill has to say, but his reputation for both integrity and business will make it hard for them to ignore him in the way that much of the anti-FIFA rhetoric that followed England’s disappointment in the race for the 2018 World Cup has been laughed off as sour grapes.
My only doubt is whether Gill, a creature of the spreadsheet not the smoke-filled corridor, will have the stomach for the favour-trading and politicking that inevitably form part of the singular new world he is stepping into. Yes, he has the authority and the ideas to help turn FIFA into a much tastier omelette, but is he prepared to break the eggs?
By the way, the Exco that will gather for its post-congressional meeting on May 30, looks to me like it has the potential to be worthier of the name than any in the time I have been scrutinising FIFA – whoever is elected FIFA President. Assuming that Kuwaiti power broker and FIFA’s natural new conduit to the Olympic Movement Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah is also there, I can count five or six individuals capable of stepping with a minimum of fuss into Joseph Blatter’s well-worn shoes, if the 79-year-old incumbent is indeed elected, as nearly everyone expects, for what must surely be his final term.
Gill, 57, may be a less willing and accomplished public performer than his FA boss, Greg Dyke. But he is set to be a longer-term, weightier presence in the international game, not least because Dyke, who turns 68 in May, will be obliged, presumably, to relinquish his chairman’s post in a couple of years, as was his predecessor, David Bernstein, on attaining the age of 70, as stipulated by Article 102 of the FA’s articles of association.
In the meantime, the FA chairman is firing off ideas with the passion and energy for which he has always been known. When it comes, though, to this week’s proposal for helping the national team which came home win-less from the 2014 World Cup by taking measures to ensure that young English players get more game-time in the Premier League, I fear Dyke has picked up the wrong end of the stick.
As outlined in an article he wrote for The Guardian newspaper, Dyke’s contention – backed up, he says, by research conducted by the England Commission – is that “players are not being given the opportunity to step up to senior football between the crucial ages of 18 to 21”.
I would not disagree with that; it is the remedy – “to raise the existing requirements on homegrown players in Premier League squads, so that by 2020, 12 of a 25-man squad will be homegrown, rather than the eight it is today” – that I would take issue with. Indeed, it seems to me precisely the wrong way to go about building a better England team.
We should see it as a fantastic stroke of luck/reflection of the sheer dedication of English club fans that the richest league in world is based in our country. It means that those players who do cut the mustard there – Wayne Rooney, Raheem Sterling, the currently ubiquitous Harry Kane have the potential to be really top-notch. They also have an extraordinary opportunity to learn from the crème de la crème of the world’s top talent, attracted here because of the size of the pay packets.
And however low the numbers of England-qualified players are – according to Dyke, this season “only 22% of the players starting matches in the top four teams in the Premier League are qualified to play for England” – that is still more than one in five of the players in the best teams of the richest league in the world who are English. That is a lot more than would be the case if the richest league in the world were in any other country.
Yes, we have learnt from European results this year, that “richest” does not necessarily mean “best” in this context. But that, to me, merely serves to underline that this would not be a sensible time to enact proposals restricting clubs’ ability to sign the players whom they believe would most strengthen their squads, and, hence, risk sending the Premier League spinning further down the European pecking order.
A far more sensible approach, in my opinion, would be to focus effort and resources on encouraging more talented 18-21 year-olds who are not yet ready for the Premier League big-time to move abroad to gain the nous and experience they need rather than warming benches in London and Lancashire. How beneficial might it be to have a couple of the more gifted English teenagers in the first team of an Anderlecht or an Ajax Amsterdam, say, or of Bielsa’s Olympique Marseille? We are, after all, supposed to have a unified labour market in the European Union (at least for the time being). Why not utilise it as readily for exporting players in pursuit of the optimum environment, as for importing them?
I suspect the obstacles preventing this sort of thing from happening more often are as much financial as cultural: the Premier League is so much richer than most others that such moves might entail a substantial pay cut for those who could most benefit, even if they spend most of their time kicking their heels in the reserves. As Dyke pointed out, moreover, English clubs already need a proportion of England-qualified players to fulfil their quotas, even if they are not good enough for the first-choice eleven. Increasing the requirements, as Dyke proposes, might well condemn a greater number of English players to this sort of shadow-life in which it is almost impossible for them to fulfil their potential. Plus, with another new monster broadcasting deal already signed, we know that the wealth discrepancy between the Premier League and most others is highly likely to get bigger over the balance of the decade.
So, once England’s 16-17 year-old A-listers have been identified – and this we have got better at, with England winning, as Dyke points out, two of the last five European under-17 championships – the FA needs to take an extremely close interest in the critical next three to four years of their development. It needs to enlist the Premier League’s assistance in ensuring that these formative years are as productive for these young players as possible. And if that means using some of the league’s television windfall to set up a pot to help fund the right overseas placements, so be it. The FA is not without leverage in these matters: it is good PR for the league if it can be shown demonstrably to be helping to build a better England team; it is good, furthermore, for the clubs if the process transforms the players into more valuable and marketable assets.
The FA would probably need, at least at first, to devote time to persuading the players themselves that under the right circumstances, a move abroad, far from shifting them out of the thoughts of those best-placed to further their career, could be very much in their longer-term interests. Indeed, it should place mentors overseas, funded if necessary from that TV windfall pot, to keep a scrupulous eye on young English players’ on-field and off-field development.
The vast majority of countries, from Nigeria and Belgium to giants of the international game such as Argentina and Brazil, lose their most talented youngsters overseas in more or less haphazard fashion, as the market dictates. They are then faced with constructing a national side from the best of the survivors from this global school of hard knocks. Some manage this very well; France, whose national centre at Clairefontaine became a template for other associations, won the World Cup in 1998 with a squad featuring just 10 France-based players, mostly reserves. Eight of the Brazil team that started the World Cup final four years later played for European clubs.
The presence of the Premier League in our country ought to give England the opportunity, denied to most others, of tailoring the development of the nation’s best youngsters in a much more planned and deliberate way. Those good enough at 18 to hold their own in the Premier League have a better chance of making their mark there than teenagers from anywhere else. Those who need a little more time, meanwhile, should be provided with funding and leeway to play at the level that best suits their immediate requirements while being monitored every bit as closely as those who stay at home.
I am afraid that the FA chairman’s well-intentioned protectionism would risk condemning more English youngsters to a career of short-term loans in the English lower leagues to the possible detriment of their development, while also lowering the quality of play in the Premier League and perhaps jeopardising its astounding commercial success. In the field of football, at least, let’s for once embrace all the opportunities that Europe affords rather than turning our back on them.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.