So where do I begin with my blog? I know, what has recently been in the news and caused me to sigh really loudly? Football. Don't get me wrong, I love, live and breath football. However there is still one thing that always grinds my gears. So called experts discussing what is affecting international football. I read a lot of articles today (see link here) discussing the short comings of the amount of english under 21 players and their playing time in the premiership, which is somehow causing the downfall of the national team. Now I find this articles so profoundly frustrating to the point I can only think of them as if buzz killington was ruining a perfectly good evening resulting in me rubbing my temples in agony.

Not only do these types of article not allow for time and development of new young players they seem to ramp pressure on existing players and take a bash at foreign players and foreign coaches and owners (surprise!). 

My frustration with these articles stems from this, what do you want to see? A sub par league where every player is english/homegrown and the football suffers as a result and the global brand becomes weak due to the top players being pushed out or do you want to stand tall as advocates for the superior brand that has possibly become more out of reach with the common fan due to the mass influx of money plowed into it? I know which one I would choose as bad as it seems.

This notion that playing young English players in the premiership/europa league/champions league will somehow turn them all into world beaters who can perform on the international stage is embarrassing. You don't get better by simply playing at a higher level, you get better by playing with or learning off superior players. I'm pretty sure I could learn twice as much playing with Paul Scholes than I could have from Scott Parker. Same way if I played and trained alongside Dennis Bergkamp I would reaped the benefit as opposed to training alongside another player I broke through the youth academy with. Want to be the best? Learn from the best? Want to stay average? Play with average?

Which comes down to another point of coaching. The Elite Performance Plan that has come into place is the first step. Increase the hours of players at a young age are being coached, decrease the size of the pitch football is being played on. Get them used to mastering the ball before they worry about running around the pitch all day. If English players came through who were technicians on the ball first and foremost then I guarantee this next generation would be able to play football that can be classed as possession football.