We must listen to what he is saying
Prominent
Football Association director Sir Trevor Brooking seems to be playing a more prominent role around national team issues since the World Cup debacle. Fancy that, a football man in a position of power at the FA, whatever next? Anyway, Brooking appears to be trying take us towards producing a decent home-grown coach for England. Talking to the BBC he said,
“I think longer-term, after Fabio, we’d like to go English. A third English coach is something the board is interested in. We want to create a spell where we appoint English coaches and Fabio can help us enormously to bridge that gap and help that transition. We’ve got a short-term priority of the qualifying games but over the next couple of years the National Football Centre will hopefully be built, and that’s going to be the hub site for the future development of English coaches. But it’s important to have someone experienced in now for the next couple of years because the next two, four, six years are going to be a challenge for whoever’s managing the team.”
These type of words have been said before by the FA after previous disasters but this time Brooking is optimistic that things will change for the better,
“The main difference is that everybody seems to be talking positively and we have something to build on. The review, I’m hoping, is to look at budgets because the shame is that we’re doing this at a time which is tough for the FA from an economic point of view. I accept that the financial environment is tough, but there’s no doubt that Spain, Germany and Holland who were the three European semi-finalists at the World Cup invested in coaching and player development as a priority in the last decade, and they are probably reaping the benefits now.”
One decision that Brooking and some senior colleagues at the FA had to make in the aftermath of the Germany humiliation was whether or not to change the manager.
“We were all stunned at how poor we were. We reflected on it as he did. From a pride point of view he was hugely disappointed, but he wanted to try to do better and help rebuild. Yeah, you could change the manager but is that really the core of the problem? We haven’t won anything for forty-four years and the group we were hoping would change that haven’t been good enough.”
As Brooking continued to talk sense he talked about the lack of first team Premier League opportunities for young English players coming through.
“There isn’t the depth that we would like coming through.. There are players in the under-19s and 21s but the big challenge is where are they going to get first team opportunities in the next few years? When I was 17 or 18 I was getting first-team chances at West Ham but now even at the end of the season for a mid-table team, the prize money of £750,000 for each place means clubs won’t take the risk. It means you’ve got to be so special to get in at 17 or 18 and we’re not producing those players who can force themselves into the team.”
Brooking went on to reiterate that coaching at a really early age is where we need to improve. He said that he was only saying what coaches up and down the country had been saying for a while.
“I’m only the mouthpiece for a lot of outstanding technical people in the academies and centres of excellence. There’s a lot of knowledge but they are frustrated that we haven’t been able to get that investment. We’ve got to train specialist coaches in the younger age groups and there has to be an investment in that. In the past a decent coach in the 5-11 age group wanting a full-time job would have to move up to 17-18 years old level.”
It is refreshing to hear what Brooking has had to say and I hope that the FA take note and move forward to address the issues he is talking about.
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