Soccer Portal

The debate about the lack of quality in the England national side continues, as the FA have announced that they are keeping faith in Fabio Capello. One interesting angle on the topic has led to discussions about the fact that English players rarely play abroad. In fact, only a few famous English names have gone on to have any success away from their homeland, with notables like Gary Lineker, David Beckham, David Platt, and Steve McManaman. Currently only one Englishman plays abroad and that is ex-Arsenal player Jermaine Pennant, who is going into his second season with Real Zaragoza in Spain. Some ex-England stars have come out to state that because English players do not travel across Europe very well, they are missing out on valuable lessons which could be learned from the style of football played on the continent. True, the English have a unique style of getting the ball forward as quickly as possible without  much patience for quality possession. So, is English players not playing abroad hurting England, or is too many foreigners in the Premier League hurting England? This led to some investigation on the top teams at South Africa 2010, to see if this was a viable argument.

107 players out of the 736 taking part at the 2010 FIFA World Cup came from Premier League teams, that’s around one seventh of the total make up. With the influx of money from the Premier League, encouraging its teams to snap up Europe’s best, it’s hard to raise the level of the English international game, when the English players are sitting on the bench. That’s the main argument. But, maybe everyone is looking at this situation backwards. Perhaps England do have a lot of creative talent around the country, but they are simply being overlooked as they are not good for that uninspiring typical English way. Take Joe Cole’s situation. Chelsea let him walk on a free transfer, and would have been the perfect player to do a Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta or Kaka role, a creative number 10 at the World Cup. But he simply never got used enough because that largely goes against the grain of the English style. So is the English game good enough for their youth? France had the biggest volume of stars playing in England, with seven of their squad playing in England, and look at their major malfunction.

Like England, both Italy and Germany selected only players who play in their own respective leagues. In the case of the Germans, they invested heavily in their youth development a decade ago to the tune of half a billion Euro’s and now they are reaping the benefits. Like England though, Italy failed miserably at the World Cup after selecting only players based in their domestic league. Serie A has something of the Premier League syndrome, proving that you can have too much of a good thing. In this case, foreign based players. Inter Milan won the Italian domestic double last season without any Italians in their team, and the European Champions League winners have just 12 Europeans in their 24 man first team squad, and just six of those are Italians. Between them, Brazil and Argentina have 14 players at the World Cup who play in Serie A, so the best places in Italy are being filled by non-Italians. No wonder the national side suffers. So the perhaps the argument about England’s players not playing abroad can fall on deaf ears, as Spain and Germany do everything at home, they just nurture their natural talent. Italy and England, two of Europe’s top leagues are being damaged from the inside out. Only six players out of the Brazilian, German and Spanish squads play in the Premier League, which means that the Premier League is not even getting the best of the foreign players available.