England - One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

There has been a long time since my last post on here, going back to when Euro 2012 started! But after a long absence from blogging, I have decided to come back!..

One thing, that has been on my mind recently, is the English national team, who were victorious over Brazil last night at Wembley winning 2-1. At the time people are saying its a fantastic victory and it is a landmark victory for us. I disagree.

Theo Walcott is judged to be one of the better future England
stars, yet is very average on the world stage

The win was good, I can't fault that, but we need to remember that it was a friendly match which counts for very little if you can't deliver on the big stage, remember when we beat Spain 1-0 in a friendly?. Yet we still did very average in the last major competition. The whole attitude to the England side set-up seems to me as the title says 'One step forward, two steps back'. We are making small improvements over the years but we are taking steps back as our own young talent is no where near up to the standard of what the, Argentines, Germans and Spanish are producing. The reason being our youth facilities and academies and coaching, training is just not good enough. We are producing average players for which is going to be in a few years a very average England side. Unless something changes, we will continue to falter at the quarter final stages of major competitions.

I think its embarrassing to have the biggest, richest and most powerful football league structure in the world be left with a very average side. The money is coming in from everywhere for these clubs to produce quality talent, yet we seem unable to produce it. Football clubs seem more bothered about profits, than production of their own youngsters, especially when you can buy a cheap foreign import for a small fee and develop them into a fantastic talent, which is probably cheaper than producing home grown talent, as these clubs sell off their players for cheap prices most of the time.

When people turn round and say that our best English player is Wayne Rooney, I can't disagree, he is our best player by a long distance, if you do not count Joe Hart, who I think is the best keeper I have seen since David Seaman. But when you compare Rooney on the big stage along side Lionel Messi, the gulf of class is huge. This really says a lot about our game. When our best player is no where near as good as the other top class internationals, yet we are supposed to be a big nation for football.

They've seen it all before, England fans face more years of
misery before success

I fear for the English side's future as I fail to see when we will ever win or come close to winning a major competition, I hope I am wrong, but I can't see us winning anything for another 20 years at the rate we are going at. as the Germans, Spanish are the leading giants of football talent at the moment and the youth production of these nations is took much more seriously over there, than over here. Also, the youngsters who are German or Spanish who are the same age of our up coming players are better already than our rising stars.

If we are relying on the likes of Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and such forth, we need to be worried, very worried.