English players and the EPL issue

[iron_stan 0]

1)no. would be nice though. unlikely to happen if we want to stay top flight2)no3)Money. People want to be entertained, to see the best, clubs are encouraged to bring in flare and talent by the sponsors, the premier league is about dollar and the tv companies dont care about england, international, or home grown football. We cant have it both ways, it IS the best league in the world and most competitive but that comes at a price. Been a lot of talk about home grown quotas recently, if that was to be enforced over here severely we would see a drop off in entertainment, sponsorship, tv revenue etc. It would take 20 year for english team to become genuinely competitive in europe again with just bulk squads of english players. The damage has been done, either accept it or take 20 years in the doldrums for your clubs

imo obviously

[smooth 114]

1 No, I have no problem a few British players are fine if they are good enough. We are in a free market and it should stay that way.

2 No, league status is key and I would rather have foreign players, with guile, speed and skill. You should embrace different styles.

3 Simple look at the teams before sky financed the league. It was an English game then, how I was brought up. Now it is very good but other leagues are catching up and leagues such as Germany show you can with many German players

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

I took my coaching Quals in England as young as possible whilst at University in England. I was amazed to be handed the English FA manual - written by the discredited Charles Hughes and as followed by Graham Taylor et al - close skills, dribbling, creativity, tactics, fluidity of position were almost entirely absent. Upon completion I immediately returned to play in Italy, where one of the coaches had been imported from Ajax. The difference was astounding to me and it was a completely different game. In Italy to make it you need exceptional technique (our warm ups would include timed keepy uppy which would run to 15mins and thousands of touches without dropping, super fast passes from a metre, both feet at high speed, one on one games with "goals" just big enough to get a ball through in confined spaces a few metres long and maybe 2 wide...the Dutch influence had us learning tactics, space creation, positional fluidity and a chess like approach to what options you chose and why you chose them. That is all before we actually trained and worked precise techniques for all possible scenarios.

In England the Charles Hughes book was drilled into coaches for many years and physical attributes were seen as prerequisite. Close skills, fluid movement, (small) technical players were not favoured, creativity and skills were " luxury" and - if utterly exceptional - were to "be fitted in" around the model at best.

Now tell why anyone is surprised England are so far behind?

[smooth 114]

Parma, I had a similar experience working in the us for three years. I was working for a soccer giant in the us and had opportunities to see everything that us youth soccer was doing, the collegiate programmes, the professional league, the tournaments across the country. It is a country miles ahead of us in all aspects... When I walk past Sunday league etc I am embarrassed by the facilities, the coaching, the fields.

In America soccer however was not always inexpensive and I think that is the difference, this is still the game where you need a ball and two jumpers for goalposts. It makes it charming but also a long way off what it needs to be. Yes we have the premier league, a league structure etc, but clubs are in debt, players are shifted on more readily, the skill direction is allegedly that the £££ Murdoch puts in filters through. Quite simply no. Go to other countries and sports are financed in a way that brings great pride.