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Football woes
Skills gap
Nov 22nd 2007
From The Economist print edition
Why England's footballers keep underachieving
FOR a nation that invented the sport, the British are not much good at football. England may be home to the Premier League, perhaps the best club competition in the world, but half of the players fielded on any given weekend are neither British nor Irish. In a recent round of the Champions League, which pits 32 top teams across Europe against each other, there were barely ten English players, compared with more than 50 Brazilians and some 30 players each from France, Italy and Spain. There were also more Argentines, Germans, Romanians, Turks, Czechs, Serbs and Dutchmen. On November 21st the English national team, which has reached the final of only one tournament (the 1966 World Cup), was knocked out of next summer's European Championship.
This is part of a wider phenomenon some call “the Wimbledon effect”. England's Lawn Tennis Association, the world's richest tennis body, hosts the sport's most prestigious competition—and no Briton has won it for 30 years. Britain is spending £9 billion ($18.5 billion) or more to host the 2012 Olympics, but Colin Jackson, a former athlete, says it will take a “miracle” for Britain to win a gold medal in any track or field event. The country invests in bricks and mortar and marquees, but not in the skills of its sportsmen.
In football, Britain's main sport, some Luddites think the open labour market is to blame for the lack of local talent. They include Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister. On November 14th he argued that, as British clubs face no obligation to field players of their own nationality, they lack an incentive to develop home-grown talent. But this does not explain why other countries with the same rules prosper. Foreign players are cheaper to buy, but that is because there are more of them who reach the required standard. And when there were few foreigners in English football, the national team was no better.
The real problem, say Mr Sutcliffe's critics, is that the English do not develop their young players properly. Youth coaching, traditionally led by schools, was overhauled in 1997 by the Football Association (FA), the sport's governing body in England. More responsibility was transferred to professional clubs, which were required to improve their in-house academies.
But even these lag behind their European rivals in the quantity and quality of their coaching. A player at an English academy typically has two or three coaching sessions a week; on the continent, he could expect five. Damien Comolli, the sporting director at Tottenham Hotspur, a London club, calculates that a player in his native France clocks up 2,304 hours of coaching between 12 and 16, twice as many as an English player. And whereas the Englishman will spend much of that time playing matches (a poor way to develop skill, as each player spends a small fraction of a game in possession of the ball), the continental will be honing his technique.
Spain, Portugal and Holland all have excellent youth systems, but it is Mr Comolli's country that has set the standard since 1988, when its vaunted Clairefontaine national academy opened. France failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1990 and 1994. In 1998 the French won it, along with the European Championship two years later. (Thierry Henry, one of the first batch of Clairefontaine graduates, was their top scorer both times.) They reached another World Cup final last year. But the FA's plans for an English version of Clairefontaine in Burton-upon-Trent have been stalled for five years, partly to pay for a new football stadium at Wembley and partly to placate clubs, which fear losing control over their young charges.
In any case, the problem runs deeper: Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, believes British players are already “damaged goods” by the time they enter academies, typically at the age of nine. More dangerous streets and disappearing playing fields have made the casual kickabouts in which youngsters first develop their skills increasingly rare. This is compounded by a dearth of good coaches at the grassroots—the money and prestige lie in coaching older prospects. As a result, the talent pool from which academies recruit is deficient. And by then it can be too late: physical and tactical prowess can be developed at any age, but technique must be acquired early.
Support for restricting the inflow of foreign players is growing, and it echoes concern about foreign workers in the wider economy. Mr Sutcliffe's comments call to mind the recent promise of Gordon Brown, the prime minister, to provide “British jobs for British workers”: there is, it seems, greater political desire to protect citizens from immigrant labour than to improve their ability to compete with it. But freedom of movement within the European Union makes such notions impractical, and many in the game regard them as risible. A review of youth development, commissioned by the FA and other football bodies and published in July, rejected the idea of quotas in favour of improving coaching, particularly of children from five to 11 years old. These voices deserve to prevail. In football, as elsewhere, protectionism merely coddles the mediocre.
Skills gap
Nov 22nd 2007
From The Economist print edition
Why England's footballers keep underachieving
FOR a nation that invented the sport, the British are not much good at football. England may be home to the Premier League, perhaps the best club competition in the world, but half of the players fielded on any given weekend are neither British nor Irish. In a recent round of the Champions League, which pits 32 top teams across Europe against each other, there were barely ten English players, compared with more than 50 Brazilians and some 30 players each from France, Italy and Spain. There were also more Argentines, Germans, Romanians, Turks, Czechs, Serbs and Dutchmen. On November 21st the English national team, which has reached the final of only one tournament (the 1966 World Cup), was knocked out of next summer's European Championship.
This is part of a wider phenomenon some call “the Wimbledon effect”. England's Lawn Tennis Association, the world's richest tennis body, hosts the sport's most prestigious competition—and no Briton has won it for 30 years. Britain is spending £9 billion ($18.5 billion) or more to host the 2012 Olympics, but Colin Jackson, a former athlete, says it will take a “miracle” for Britain to win a gold medal in any track or field event. The country invests in bricks and mortar and marquees, but not in the skills of its sportsmen.
In football, Britain's main sport, some Luddites think the open labour market is to blame for the lack of local talent. They include Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister. On November 14th he argued that, as British clubs face no obligation to field players of their own nationality, they lack an incentive to develop home-grown talent. But this does not explain why other countries with the same rules prosper. Foreign players are cheaper to buy, but that is because there are more of them who reach the required standard. And when there were few foreigners in English football, the national team was no better.
The real problem, say Mr Sutcliffe's critics, is that the English do not develop their young players properly. Youth coaching, traditionally led by schools, was overhauled in 1997 by the Football Association (FA), the sport's governing body in England. More responsibility was transferred to professional clubs, which were required to improve their in-house academies.
But even these lag behind their European rivals in the quantity and quality of their coaching. A player at an English academy typically has two or three coaching sessions a week; on the continent, he could expect five. Damien Comolli, the sporting director at Tottenham Hotspur, a London club, calculates that a player in his native France clocks up 2,304 hours of coaching between 12 and 16, twice as many as an English player. And whereas the Englishman will spend much of that time playing matches (a poor way to develop skill, as each player spends a small fraction of a game in possession of the ball), the continental will be honing his technique.
Spain, Portugal and Holland all have excellent youth systems, but it is Mr Comolli's country that has set the standard since 1988, when its vaunted Clairefontaine national academy opened. France failed to qualify for the World Cup in 1990 and 1994. In 1998 the French won it, along with the European Championship two years later. (Thierry Henry, one of the first batch of Clairefontaine graduates, was their top scorer both times.) They reached another World Cup final last year. But the FA's plans for an English version of Clairefontaine in Burton-upon-Trent have been stalled for five years, partly to pay for a new football stadium at Wembley and partly to placate clubs, which fear losing control over their young charges.
In any case, the problem runs deeper: Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, believes British players are already “damaged goods” by the time they enter academies, typically at the age of nine. More dangerous streets and disappearing playing fields have made the casual kickabouts in which youngsters first develop their skills increasingly rare. This is compounded by a dearth of good coaches at the grassroots—the money and prestige lie in coaching older prospects. As a result, the talent pool from which academies recruit is deficient. And by then it can be too late: physical and tactical prowess can be developed at any age, but technique must be acquired early.
Support for restricting the inflow of foreign players is growing, and it echoes concern about foreign workers in the wider economy. Mr Sutcliffe's comments call to mind the recent promise of Gordon Brown, the prime minister, to provide “British jobs for British workers”: there is, it seems, greater political desire to protect citizens from immigrant labour than to improve their ability to compete with it. But freedom of movement within the European Union makes such notions impractical, and many in the game regard them as risible. A review of youth development, commissioned by the FA and other football bodies and published in July, rejected the idea of quotas in favour of improving coaching, particularly of children from five to 11 years old. These voices deserve to prevail. In football, as elsewhere, protectionism merely coddles the mediocre.
I almost cried. With all the trophies I've won, this was the greatest moment. I made a player who was nothing into something.
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