Manuel Pellegrini has just admitted Manchester City’s lavishly funded football academy is unlikely to produce a first-team player during his time at the club. José Mourinho has made similar comments in the past, with John Terry remaining Chelsea’s last home-grown player despite a huge financial commitment to youth facilities.
Five former England managers signed an open letter last week in support of Greg Dyke’s proposals for a quota system to increase opportunity for English players within the Premier League, but is there any evidence that this country can produce players of sufficient quality to compete on even terms with foreign imports? While the answer to that question may be a qualified yes, if one poses it slightly differently – can this country produce sufficient quality players? – there appear to be fewer grounds for real confidence.
The letter pointed to the emergence of Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley and Harry Kane in support of the theory that this country can still unearth world-class talent, presenting that young trio as the latest in a line that goes back through Steven Gerrard and Gary Lineker to Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney. Yet exceptional players are not really the issue here. It has always been the case that the very best players rise to the top in England, and rarely the case that they have any difficulty getting noticed.
England might have won the World Cup at a time when the vast majority of players plying their trade in its leagues were home-produced and qualified, but that does not mean the overall standard was better back then and nor does it follow that increasing the Englishness of the Premier League would improve the effectiveness of the national team. Roy Hodgson and the nation might be happier if the England manager had more players from which to choose, but the number of exceptional talents at his disposal would most likely remain the same.
The challenge to anyone who believes otherwise is to answer the question of why the academies are not producing first-team players. They are not short of funding or facilities, they have been in situ long enough, there are plenty of hopeful aspirants. So where are the players? How come when Gerrard leaves none of the Liverpool first team will speak with a scouse accent? What happened to Manchester United’s youth development programme after the class of ’92?
Tottenham and Southampton, to be fair, are bringing through home-produced players with some success, though they are the exceptions rather than the rule and it looks as though Champions League football will elude both clubs for another season.
Look a little further down the table and clubs with traditional English cores can be found. Some of them, such as Stoke and West Ham, are not even near the relegation positions. The English footballer is not in any imminent danger of becoming extinct, the situation is simply that very few are good enough for the highest level. Given that the clubs at the top of the Premier League have an almost unlimited amount of money to throw at their various problems, it is hard to see why any of them should accept an increased English quota if it means a drop in standards.
Which it almost certainly would, since while the sudden increase in demand for Sterling’s services could be viewed as an indication that clubs recognise top English talent as a prudent investment, it also illustrates how rarely such an opportunity arises. Gerrard famously stayed loyal to Liverpool despite being tempted by Chelsea, Wayne Rooney was always going to end up at Manchester United once it became clear Everton were looking to sell, but had either of those two obvious talents appeared on the open market at 20 years of age all the top clubs would have been quick to register an interest.
English football could do with being a bit more English. Simply buying in talent from around the world is no way for a proud nation to behave, and a greater native presence at Premier League clubs would undoubtedly allow the game to feel better about itself.
That might be as good as the feelgood factor gets, however, even if Dyke’s reforms ever take shape. The idea that English football genius is being wasted through lack of opportunity is almost certainly erroneous, as is the theory that artificially increasing the pool of England-qualified players would put the country back in contention for a World Cup. The amount of real talent the nation produces appears to stubbornly remain the same across generations.
Just occasionally, if the right set of circumstances come together, it might be enough to win a World Cup. But what we are seeing week to week in the Premier League is something altogether different. Every season is more demanding than the next, and increasingly it seems the demands are not being met by English players.
“It is a problem,” Hull’s Steve Bruce has just admitted with his usual bluntness. “More young players are going out than coming in. I keep having to let players go because the standard of what we are looking for has gone up.”
That, it would seem, is a basic deficiency that can only be rectified by coaches, not quotas.
