“Ever get the feeling you’ve been conned?”
The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten famously taunted a crowd in America with this question during the band’s last-ever performance.
He is doing the rounds – in between advertising butter – at the moment to mark the anniversary of the Pistols’ album Never Mind the Bollocks.
Ever feel you have been conned by the England football team? Of course, it is not the England team; it is Team England – a marketing monster created to help con us all into paying for the profligate spending that went into rebuilding Wembley stadium.
As part of the con we were told of a ‘Golden Generation’ of players that would one day bring us real success on the world stage. Our golden generation is the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Gary Neville, Beckham, and now Rooney.
Spain’s golden generation is Xavi and Iniesta; Argentina’s is Messi, Higuain and Aguerro. Ghana has a golden generation, as did Portugal. Brazil nearly always seem to have one, even if they are not quite like the real golden generation of 1970 or 1982 (the likes of Zico, Socrates and Falcao for aficionados).
My point is simple: our golden generation is no more golden than the butter Johnny Rotten advertises.
The current two-week period of reflection over the future of Capello is more like a two-week period of unofficial mourning for the final death of English football – a demise that has been going on since the day we won the World Cup 44 years ago.
The history of the game is littered with examples where we insist that, because we invented the game, we must be good at it purely out of historical right – while nations all over the world, no matter how small, or how poor they are economically, actually play the game better than us.
Yes, our players play too much football. Yes, having a 64-year-old draconian Italian as manager is not a great cultural fit for players who would rather fiddle with their Playsations (a game incidentally invented for kids and played by men, which in itself says a lot about our country).
But all of these are excuses to the fundamental issue – our players are not technically good enough. We do not even have players who can control the ball and pass to the level so many other countries in this World Cup can.
And this goes back to the roots of the game – how it is taught in schools, clubs and the variety of football camps around the country. The vast majority of coaches have little or no coaching qualifications of any substance – and I do not mean the token excuse for a course sponsored by McDonald’s under the loose direction of the FA.
The thousands of well-meaning parents shouting at kids on a Sunday morning are the same people shouting at the TV screen when England are yet again embarrassed out of another major football tournament. One leads to another. Teach kids to play the game properly now and in 20 years we might have a proper national team. If not, prepare for a lifetime of disappointment – but at least you will have helped pay off the mortgage for Wembley.
Lawrence Gosling is the founding editor of Investment Week. His views are his own, any comments to him at lawrencegosling@sky.com
