|
I wanted to build upon the comments I wrote yesterday evening on what I see as the "red herring" of foreigners in English football.
The current crop of English players have often been referred to as the "golden generation". I think we are in the throes of a golden age, but not in terms of the quality of our footballers.
Purely in terms of the unprecedented sums of money flowing into the game.
English football is richer than any other nation's football in the world. Not because it's necessarily better - although having regularly watched both the Bundesliga and Serie A on overseas postings I can vouch for their deadly dullness - but because we Englishmen love our football like a religion and happily surrender our Sky subscription fees.
We also tune in to ITV to watch and support "our" Liverpool and Manchester United in the Champions League, whereas I can promise you that a Hamburger SV fan would spit at the telly if he saw Bayern playing anyone, from Germany or anywhere else.
Our love of and passion for the game attracts the advertisers who pay the TV networks who pay the FA. And what do the FA do?
They give all the money to the big clubs who then, as an example, pay Eric Djemba-Djemba millions to squander on cars, birds, booze and Stan James before wasting even more of our money in the insolvency courts. This is serious lunacy.
I'm sorry, but our game is being ruined by ingrained short-sightedness and lack of vision at every level.
As long as footballers, or rather mediocre, uncommitted wastrels like Djemba-Djemba are attracted to these shores by nothing more than the ludicrous sums of money on offer, our game at a national level will suffer.
As long as we prefer to pay millions to average foreign players in the hope of short-term results, instead of investing in the development of grass roots and academy football throughout the league and - more importantly - the non-league game, our sport at a national level will suffer.
As long as clubs give the manager of the Premier League's worst resourced club three months to turn a fairly good Championship team into an outfit fit to challenge for a UEFA Cup spot, football at national level will suffer.
Whilst the vision-less suits at the FA allow the gold flowing from Englishmen's passion for football to flow into the pockets of greedy foreigners, we are wasting that passion. It isn't about quotas, it's about pay.
Our money must flow first into the development of our young players, our facilities, our coaches and our infrastructure. Logic says that with the funding we give our game, they should and must be the best in the world.
If there's a surplus, and there will be a big surplus, that's when the players - English or foreign, get their pound of flesh. It'll be a bit less than it is now, but we will have got our priorities right and secured a future for our game.
And in the process, we might see a few fewer Djemba-Djemba's in our leagues and our courts.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
