When England went down 2-0 to Spain last week the studio pundit Sam Allardyce provided the casual analysis that our nation will "never" produce players with the technical ability of David Villa, Fernando Torres or Xabi Alonso. That one of our foremost English managers, who was once shortlisted by the Football Association to coach our national team, should have reached this stark conclusion is, frankly, depressing. Why does a man who spends his life studying ProZone statistics in the pursuit of an extra percentage point of performance express such meek resignation at the state of the English game?
Talk to the league administrators and they will point the finger at the record of Sir Trevor Brooking. Indeed, it is five years since he took charge of the FA's football development. In that time the green shoots of progress should be seen but still the club academies complain about the ability of the youngsters being taken through the schools system.
But to blame Brooking — who had more natural talent in his forehead than Allardyce players such as Nicky Hunt, Kevin Davies and Gary Speed have ever possessed in their feet — is far too simplistic. The English disease may not germinate on the training grounds but in the boardroom of the FA itself.
That is the conclusion reached by Uefa mandarins, whose intimate knowledge of the rest of European football, where success is not all predicated on the pressing game, has given them a unique insight into where we are going wrong in this island. Look into the FA boardroom and you will see men in suits who owe their positions to their (mixed) record in balancing the books at professional clubs, alongside men who have devoted their lives in the service of the amateur game (with all the nice perks that can bring).
Where, asks Uefa, among the suits are the tracksuits? Where are the managers, the coaches, the referees, the supporters, or even the agents? Football is awash with stakeholders without a political stake, players and coaches' movements that have been hobbled into mere pressure groups. "In some countries it would be difficult to imagine the national technical director not being on the board of the national football association," say Uefa.
Instead David Gill is on the FA board. He runs a tremendously successful business at Manchester United, where he is the chief executive. But if Gill presumed to tell Sir Alex Ferguson how to manage the football team he would be subjected to a hairdryer as hot as that experienced by any wayward United pro. So why is his voice accorded such volume in the Soho Square boardroom, that policy cauldron for English football, where the players and coaches have none?
"The lack of [representation for technical staff] in the relevant bodies in English football may, almost by definition, lead to discussions focused more on commercial and football-political issues and less on football issues," Uefa adds. This August it will be four long years since the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, Terry Burns, was called upon to conduct a full structural review of the FA. Among his conclusions was that the appointment of an independent chairman would be vital to the FA as it sought to balance off the interests of the amateur game and the clubs. And so David Triesman was brought in from the world of politics.
But the momentum for reform ended there, paralysed by the interest groups who have for so long strangled progress in the game that means so much to so many. Burns's key recommendation for a streamlined board consisting of three representatives from the professional clubs or leagues, three from amateur football and three "independents" was kicked to the long grass.
Today the highest executive body in the English game still lacks any "football people". It is populated instead by those who refuse to relinquish their perks and privileges. That, frighteningly, is why Allardyce was right.
