Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Will failed England turn to Arsenal’s golden generation? Of course not.
For England, that was the Golden Generation. Actually the last two world cups and the euro thing in the middle were the tournaments of the Golden Generation. England were about to win everything.
After it was all over in South Africa, Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football, made a statement. He comes across to me these days as a charming old buffer. Not always 100% but generally at least looking roughly in the right direction (as opposed to investigating ways to cheating the Italian tax authorities like others I could mention).
Here’s one of Sir Trev’s forays….
“There is an immediate void in the standard of the team. World Cup 2014 will be difficult for England,” he said. “I don’t think there are the obvious quality coming through who can replicate what we have currently, unless we can fasttrack one or two of the younger ones – and that’s asking a lot.”
England at the world cup sent their oldest squad in history. No one was impressed.
So the world cup is over and we prepare to play Hungary at Wembley. Fortunately for me I shall be in Italy, trying to catch up on what the Milanese papers are saying about their situation. Mr Cappuccino however is still earning £6m-a-year managing England.
Meanwhile we know why England is rubbish at football – and two simple changes could resolve the problem.
In saying this I reject that England’s problems go back to 1992 and the fact that the FA lost control of the top flight of English football. That really is irrelevant – the issues are quite different.
First, we have only about 10% of the number of top qualified football coaches in England as they do in Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Even Holland out do us.
Second, we refuse to let top clubs enter reserve teams into the lower leagues as they do in countries such as Spain and Germany. I don’t say this is a panacea in its own right, but I do think it could help.
The reason for both failings come from the earliest days of footballing history in England. The FA, responsible for England was founded as a gentleman’s amateur club, and such groups never have much interest in the clever-clever ideas of proper training. Indeed to them, training was almost cheating – they revered natural ability. As the game spread they gave the coaching of young players over to school teachers, who may well have been well meaning awfully nice people, but generally their expertise was elsewhere.
As for the non-appearance of the reserves in lower leagues, if you keep up to date with Arsenal’s history on AISA’s Woolwich Arsenal site, you will know that after being banned from playing other London teams, and having turned professional, Arsenal tried to start a professional Southern League. This failed, and Arsenal joined the Football League two years later. But then the Southern League came into existence and Arsenal applied to put their reserves into that league. The league management committee found the idea “insulting”, and it has been banned ever since.
So that’s why international football is such a mess and why it will stay that way. Even the great god Rooney ended the world cup swearing at fans and refusing to speak to the media!
And the other excuses continue. Rooney wants a winter break. Everyone wants a pop at Arsenal for playing foreigners. But really we only need look within. While Sir Trev worries about our youth team coming through Mr Cappuccino is so dedicated to his task that he refused to go and watch the European Under 19s championship this summer – where England managed to get to the semis. He was busy playing golf.
It was also a shame the FA were not out in force to watch the France Spain final of that competition. The game was great, the kids were great, and quite honestly France under 19s could have swamped England’s first team.
Actually the too many foreigners bit has now had its day, quite simply because England has shown just how much it hates Arsenal by picking only one of Arsenal’s real golden generation for the under 19s – Tom Cruise. There were two Arsenal players in the final – Coquelin and Sunu, and as you might know, Sunu scored a brilliant goal. Problem is those are the only two Arsenal players at that level who don’t play for England.
So now we enter a season where we have the “homegrown” list, but where England’s under 19s don’t want to know about Arsenal’s homegrown talent.
And what do the FA do meanwhile? They manage to lose a chairman and a chief executive in the space of three months, following a stream of other defections. Oh and they get worked up over the Cappuccino Index.
And they worry about Wembley. £757m it cost, with the FA churning out £20m a year to keep the loan repayments going. The TV deal is up for renewal in 2012 – anyone fancy buying it?
But of one thing we can be sure. Just as one defeat (or even a 6-5 win) is enough for the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal to say “this is a disaster” so one win (that is all it will take) one win, for England and the press will be talking of England winning the Euros, being “up for it” and “ready to take on anyone” and we will be looking at the new “golden generation”.
Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews and Alf Ramsey… we’ll be back among the greats, forgetting that those three all played in the team that was knocked about 3-6 by Hungary.
Hungary revolutionised football tactics in the 1950s, just as Johan Cruyff and the Netherlands did in the 1970s, and just as Wenger has done at Arsenal in the last 12 years. But we don’t like revolutions in England, we don’t like radical ideas, we don’t like lots of professional coaches, we don’t like the Arsenal style… We want to keep it the English way, even in defeat.
And this is the problem for England. They don’t have many young players they are willing to pick. They won’t pick Arsenal players (despite all their obvious abilities) because they are now seen to be not purely in the England tradition.
Being traditionally English is what we are after, it seems, even though it doesn’t actually win us anything in a world that moved on 50 years ago.
How many defenders have we lost so far this close season?
One of the most depressing things about being an Arsenal fan