World Cup Journalism – Part 7

Post-mortems on Team England’s early demise from the World Cup are a dime a dozen. Every TV pundit, newspaper sports writer and resident pub expert have got it summed up. Interestingly both the BBC and Channel 4 dragged in Matthew Syed, author or recently published, ‘Bounce: How Champions Are Made’, to try to offer their viewers some enlightenment, but all Syed could do was say how complex and unfathomable it all was, but could offer nothing that you hadn’t already heard from your next door neighbour. And, in an act of great marketing astuteness, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski have got their analysis, ‘Why England Lose’ flying off the bookshelves.

But it was two articles in the London Evening Standard that caught my attention, one by Jason Cowley, (Editor of the New Statesman) 28/6/10, the other by John Barnes, former England international, in the following day’s edition.

Firstly to Cowley’s comments:

Even before the defeat, the whole structure of the English game felt wrong, from the way the hollow men of the Football Association operate to the inadequacies of schoolboy coaching, and from how the Premier League has become a plaything of the super rich to the preponderance of foreign players and non-English players at our leading clubs.

There is nothing in these few lines that has not been said a thousand times by a thousand commentators but his fellow up lines do open up the pandora’s box that is globalised sport. It’s not xenophobia or petty nationalism to lament that sides such as Arsenal play mostly without any Englishmen. It’s not unreasonable to wonder why the FA choose to pay Fabio Capello ¬£6million a year when no other international coach earns even half that much. Nor that they are unable to find a decent English coach in whom to trust.

Therein lays the dilemma. Sport, like all aspects of 21st century life is going global. There are obvious plusses and minuses to this but there is certainly no chance of putting the lid back on the box. Capital is global, labour is being exploited on a global scale and the corporate leisure and entertainment industry, of which FIFA and the IOC are an integral part, has definitely got global parameters. So while Cowley may be excused from xenophobia and petty nationalism, he is definitely displaying distinct tendencies of ludditism.

We now live in an increasingly globalised culture and there ain’t no going back. The Premier League is the advanced guard of that globalised sporting culture which will inevitably steamroller over any local sensitivities. And the plain truth is that while we all bemoan the poor state of indigenous talent during international tournaments, we crave the excitement that the international dimension of the Premier League brings us on a weekly basis. Either local talent catches up or it gets sidelined. That is the brutal logic of global capitalism and it is reflected in global sport.

Cowley concludes with a fierce indictment of English football, an indictment which lambastes the dithering men of the FA while at the same time seeking to uphold English national fortunes in the face of the relentless march of global capital in all its forms.

English football is bloated, pompous, preening and self congratulatory. What it requires most urgently is its very own version of George Osbornne’s austerity budget: a blast of cold realism and a grand plan to reverse structural decline.

Well there is little sign of any British government reversing the structural decline of British manufacturing and there is equally little chance of the FA doing a similar job on British football. Like the British economy, its downhill all the way.

John Barnes, being interviewed by Mihir Bose, tackles the apparent English footballing malaise from an altogether different angle. For Barnes it’s all about the socialist philosophy. Now there is a word you don’t hear too much of in the football world. Try this for size:

Football is a socialist sport. Financially, some may receive more rewards than others but, from a footballing perspective, for 90 minutes, regardless of whether you are Lionel Messi or the substitute right back for Argentina, you are all working to the same end.

Barnes continues in wonderful idealistic mode:

The teams which embrace the socialist ideology rather than having superstars, are the teams that are successful. Or if there are superstars they don’t perceive themselves to be that.

Barnes may well be on to something. If you look at how the talented French team imploded when they failed to work as a coherent unit one must give some credence to what Barnes is saying. Similarly, the English team never really gelled as a team although there is no doubting their individual abilities. Barnes elaborates,

Players from other nations when they play for their country are once again a socialist entity, all pulling in the same direction. The most important thing for every Brazilian player is to play for Brazil. A Brazilian who puts on that yellow shirt feels the same as the man next to him in that yellow shirt. They have a humility to that shirt. It is not the same for those who wear the Three Lions.

Barnes then travels in the same direction as Cowley, blaming the monster that is the Premier League:

The problem England has is that the corporate giant that is the Premier League rules all to the detriment of the national team. The Premier League has taken over the importance, prestige and kudos of the game. Therefore the players are superstars regardless of whether they play well for England or not. If England go out in the first round they will go back to their clubs, earn their money and everybody in England will be telling them, ‘You’re great.’

Barnes concludes with a blunt wake-up call:

In England, if we are not successful, we’re still talking about going back to fighting, instead of concentrating on the technical aspects of football where we have to improve. Even when I played for England we had this mentality of up and at them, get stuck in, and we keep repeating that. The national psyche hasn’t changed. England looks at the Premier League and thinks that is who they are. But that is not what English football is.

Owen Gibson, writing in The Guardian 29/6/10 covers much of the same territory traversed by Cowley and Barnes. How could it be otherwise. One point explicitly exposed by Gibson is the dire state of football coaching in this country. Just look at these figures:

Prior to this tournament, there were only 2,769 English coaches holding Uefa’s top qualifications. Spain had produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.

These are damning figures indeed. The conclusion: we in England don’t need that silly old Uefa piece of paper because we invented football. It’s in our genes.

Gibson also offers a comparison with the Bundesliga in terms of balance between club interests and national team interests. Gibson writes:

‘The FA’s German counterpart, the DFB, has a far more balanced relationship with the Bundesliga. That has led to a higher percentage of home-grown players plying their trade in their domestic league. In the Premier league that figure is just 37%.

Will anything change? Platini is trying to push through caps on foreign players for each club. The FA is trying to insist on youth academies and home-grown players. But in both cases they are meeting fierce resistance from the Premier League big boys. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and more recently, Man City all aspire to be global brands as does the Premier League itself. They are ill-disposed to listen to namby-pamby arguments about developing the local game. And why would Murdoch’s Sky channel be interested in Jack Smith from Grimsby when it can attract the most spectacular players from around the globe. It’s just another example of the nation state succumbing to global economic interests. We may not like it but we sure as hell better get used to it.

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