The real reason why England fail

Get in their faces!!!

Technique

Many experts have looked at the reasons why England’s national football team is not successful and most of them have looked at the lack of basic technique or the lack of mental strength at big tournaments.

Over the past weekend I have seen with my own eyes, and maybe more importantly, heard with my own ears, the real reason why England can’t produce world class footballers.

Senior

On a Saturday I am the assistant manager of a football team in Wiltshire, England. We are a senior team playing at a decent level, one step below the semi-professional leagues. We play at step seven of the non-league pyramid.

On a Sunday, I watch my sixteen year old son play for the under eighteen side of a semi-professional club in a strong local league.

Desperate

The two games I was involved in and watched have left me feeling pretty desperate for the future of the game in England.

On Saturday my side played a cup game against another team from the same league as us. Our opponents were a reserve team of a more senior club and consisted of mainly young players, trying to go further in the game. It was clear that most of these young lads, aged between seventeen and twenty, had a fair amount of individual talent and with careful guidance and coaching, would be a useful outfit.

Heard

Prior to the game I overheard the ‘team talk’ being given by the manager of our opponents. In fact, anyone within about ten miles must have heard it! His ‘team talk’ consisted of him yelling at his young players such useful advice as, ‘Get stuck in’, ‘Give me 110%’, ‘Get in their faces’, ‘Don’t let them play’, and ‘You’ve got to die for the cause’.

These pearls of wisdom were interspersed with a word beginning with ‘F’ at least once after every other word said. The ‘team talk’ concluded with the manager banging his hand rhythmically against the dressing room wall demanding that his players shouted along and worked themselves into a frenzy.

Series

Unsurprisingly, as soon as the game started my players were subjected to a series of ‘over the top’ and dangerous tackles. Each time a foul was given, the manager of the opposition would open his arms wide and scream, ‘what was wrong with that?’ at the referee and ‘good lad’ to his player. Again, I have left out the increasingly annoying use of the ‘F’ word.

The young players were quite simply scared of a manager who offered no coaching and no sensible leadership to a team who were crying out for it. We beat them 6-0 and the manager’s reaction was as sad as it was predictable. ‘You don’t want it enough’, ‘That was pathetic’, ‘You are not worth helping’, and many other stupid phrases.

Loud

On Sunday I watched the under eighteen game and again had to witness a loud mouth manager shouting and screaming at the referee, encouraging his team to be overly physical and generally abusing the beautiful game. His side lost 3-2 and he congratulated his players on the physicality of their game and blamed the referee for the result.

In both games, teams of young players who could go further are being caught up in a nasty world of football inhabited by managers who are in the game for all the wrong reasons. I saw two teams who played the game in an ugly way who are simply an extension of the manager in charge of them.

Change

This is the reason that England don’t produce world class players. These games were replicated all over the country this weekend and until this type of manager/coach is weeded out of the English game, nothing will change.

End of rant.