The English Patient

Far from lacking direction, English football wants to go in too many, with the consequences of a lack of strategy glaringly obvious

Navel-gazing time. England are out - again - and it's time to reflect on why. I can think of three or four events that really illustrate a lack of joined-up thinking behind not just English football, but sport in general.

1. The death of American Malcolm Glazer, who, along with his family, have imposed the contemporary American tactic of leveraged buyouts onto one of English football's greatest institutions, keeping it afloat financially through increasingly bemusing forays into untapped commercial markets. Official jacket potato partner anyone?
2. Greg Dyke's suggestion of what was effectively League Three - consisting of Premier League B teams - to bridge the financial and competitive gap between the Premier and Football League. Roundly condemned by all sides, it quickly appeared to be dead in the water.
3. A report by Ofsted on the standard of sporting excellence in state and public schools. Reported by the Guardian's David Conn, it highlighted the growing chasm of achievement between the two sectors, with 41% of all Olympic winning athletes coming from privately educated backgrounds - a freakishly large number when considering the number of state to public schools. It made no apparent reference as to why that was the case.
4. An interesting point made by former U-21 coach Stuart Pearce following England's elimination by Uruguay, who noted the Under 17 team had performed outstandingly at five consecutive tournaments - but then disappeared between the ages of 18-21. Why was that, he wondered.

The bigger picture here is somewhat blurry - and with good reason. English football, to put it simply, does not know what it wants to be. If it were to be analysed as a business, it undoubtedly underperforms - but the main reason for this is due to its deliberately fractured nature. The Premier League, English football's best performing 'product', generated £1.8 billion for its clubs last year but, as it is not affiliated with the FA, will keep all of that unless contractually obliged not to.

In England, as German journalist Raf Honigstein succinctly put it, football follows the money, not the other way around, as in the Bundesliga. That's resulted in clubs being bought by the planet's billionaires, with the inevitable smattering of financial disasters. Portsmouth nearly disappeared. It's no exaggeration to say Bobby Zamora saved QPR from financial meltdown in the playoff final.

If that doesn't highlight the Premier League's bubble status, consider Pearce's remarks. Uruguay happened, he suggested, because clubs pulled their best players out of the youth set up due to a lack of depth, weakening the national youth setup as a consequence. The Premier League bubble exacerbates the problem, as clubs throw eye-watering sums at players over spending a fraction developing its own resources for fear of relegation and the end of the gravy train. When the consequence could be liquidation,  you want all your resources available, all the time.

Go back to the country's production lines and see what chance British boys and girls have of making a career in football. In Belgium, clubs like Anderlecht join up with schools to ensure talented children have access to excellent facilities whilst getting an education. In the UK Ofsted suggests that 'commitment' from state school teachers is more important than the facilities privately educated children pay for.

Going back to Belgium again, who have come from nowhere to be considered one of the strongest sides in this year's World Cup, everywhere you look there is consistency. Every Belgium youth team plays 4-3-3, in the same mold as Ajax and Barcelona. That does not exist yet in England - and Belgium began their project 16 years ago. Greg Dyke thinks England should be targeting the 2022 World Cup - is that reasonable?

At each stage in the process of creating competitive sport in the UK, a hurdle must be jumped. That's fine - the British Olympic committee challenges its athletes to prove they have used resources wisely, or they will be cut from the picture next time around. It's worked tremendously well - but it's come at a significant price, as Ofsted's article indicates. 

No one is suggesting that responsibility should be shared between remote, distant bodies of arbitration either. But what's missing is precisely what's happened in Belgium - a sustained strategy, involving clubs, players, coaches, and more broadly, schools, municipal councils. A clear, overriding sense of direction.

There's simply no substitute for money here - but 'culture' is our currency, and it's the classic British term for mend-and-make-do. It's what governments turn to in times like these. Culture does not build buildings or improve pitches. It does not fund extracurricular activities. It does not encourage parents to spend money on trips around the country, or abroad, for their kids to play in competitions.

It does provide a sense of direction, but in the highest echelons of the national game, it's no replacement for sustained investment. British attitudes - that have-a-go, ne'er say die approach - have never been questioned. But British attitudes to money are slowly being uncovered, and the picture is not pretty. In sport, it penalises those who need it the most. 

In the end, the man who is now the chairman of the Football Association probably presents the greatest embodiment of the current state of the game. Dyke played a significant part in creating the modern-day Premier League, including driving a wedge between it and the FA in a deliberately orchestrated campaign of what he no doubt saw as liberation from a cumbersome body. The irony of Dyke's return, and what it says about not only English football, but its culture, should escape nobody.

Pic thanks to the Daily Telegraph