Its the Culture not the Economy

It’s not the Economy – it’s the Culture Stupid!

The repercussions of England v Germany in the last World Cup rumble on.  Shortly afterwards, in one of our most respected broadsheets, four of its ablest sports writers were asked to lend their collective wisdom to solving the question thrown into sharp relief by the events in South Africa and then dominating, in one form or another, every radio or tv talkshow – how to save the national game? 

The journalists’ solutions, which mirrored the majority of the nation’s radio callers’ remedies – ranged from getting rid of the culture of excess (too many contented over-paid underachievers), to changing the academy system, to introducing quotas on foreigners in the Premier League or to introducing a winter break to the football calendar. 

Sorry, that’s just wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again! 

What these, and the many other publicly-voiced solutions appear to have in common, is an unstated premise that the English game is fundamentally sound, but that it is a combination of external factors which maliciously conspire, to prevent England’s otherwise inevitable domination of international football!

That premise not only flies in the face of all the objective evidence, but hides the fact that the much deeper roots of the true problem lie elsewhere.  And the real problem is that even our self-appointed commentators/critics appear to be happy to spread the gospel rather than to question the orthodoxy!

It could have been anyone of our sports writers, but it just happened to be Oliver Kay in the Times, who, when discussing Theo Walcott, blithley argued:

English footballers rarely show the wit of their overseas counterparts anyway — and Aaron Lennon and Wright-Phillips would hardly be top of the class — but Walcott, having not played seriously until he was 10, at least four years older than the norm, may have left gaps in his development.

Is it only me who questions, just what is meant by the oxymoronic juxtaposition of “serious” and “football”, when applied to a ten year old, far less to a six year old?  

Apparently, normal “serious football” includes FA training sessions for 9 year olds where they spend 40 minutes running around without the ball, developing their spatial awareness (albeit now on much smaller age-appropriate pitches)!  That the more ability you develop on the ball to buy you space and time, the more space and time you have to be aware of the possibilities around you, appears to have been lost in the training manual, rumour has it, somewhere between the sections dealing with loss of pacifiers on the football pitch and how much time serious footballers should leave between training and breast-feeding!     

Is it too much to hope, rather than 9 year olds being taught teamwork and how to “press the space”, that children (to use the technical term) would actually be encouraged to simply enjoy learning to do things with the ball.  Surely there is more than enough time for organisation later – the perceived wit of their overseas counterparts is born of their being at least, permitted or at best, encouraged to attempt to develop the richest possible football vocabulary, (the Cruyff turn, the Ronaldinho flick, the Zidane spin or whatever), which allows them to truly let their football speak. We need to allow our children to have the freedom to try and to fail and thus to learn.  That is the only way they will ever do things with a ball which true football fans pay good money to see; so that in today’s world of supremely well-organised athletic pressing defences, where space is immediately denied even to those merely in the vicinity of the ball, that they have the ball skills and unfettered confidence to impose their will, their skill, their wit.   

Whatever the particular perceived rights and obvious wrongs of the present mentality, its effects on the football culture are far-reaching.  Gian-Luca Vialli in a recent book recounts how when David Beckham, perhaps the archetypal product of the modern English system, arrived at Real Madrid, the Brazillian players were all surprised by his ball skills, which they reckoned were the equal of any of theirs.  I suspect its not just the Brazillians who would be shocked by that assessment. 

But what is equally clear is that those English players who, for whatever reason, have not had the ability to express themselves with the ball at their feet drummed out of them at a very early age, are traditionally, never or very rarely, picked.  For how else could the FA explain why Stan Bowles, Tony Currie, Alan Hudson, Rodney Marsh, Charlie George and Matt Le Tissier have won only 42 international caps between them!

But t is not just newspaper journalists and football managers who unquestioningly perpetuate this suffocating culture, which elevates passion over skill, and sacrifices creativity on the altar of organisation. 

It is also still constantly rammed home to every all too impressionable wide-eyed young viewer or listener who hear tv commentator after radio commentator praising a player merely for covering every blade of grass, as if he were a paid to be groundsman rather than a ball player!  

It is re-inforced by every negative condemnation of each and every failed attempt to beat a player with a piece of skill, with the threat that the player’s manager will have a go at him for merely attempting it, rather than having a go at him for not having practiced the particular skill long enough!  

And it is repeated and repeated with brain-washing regularity when every failure on a football pitch is bemoaned as due solely to nothing more than a lack of passion!   

You would hope that commentators at least, who are not paid for results on the pitch, would realise that if all you praise is endeavour, all you get is sweat!

If any good will come out of England’s shameful humbling at the feet of Germany it will start with the general acceptance that what failed England on the pitch in South Africa was not the lack of the ability to try harder, but simply the lack of ability to play better.