Are Foreign Player's To Blame For England Failure?

Title: Are Foreign Player's To Blame For England Failure?

...are they really?



November 21st 2007. Despite having an umbrella Steve McClaren is soaking wet. He doesn't manage to hide under it. Rain gets to him. Rain which has been coming down from his critics' pen's throughout his entire international career, and which will most certainly get stronger once he leaves the holly turf of Wembley stadium and steps into the tunnel. A tunnel which he's dragged their beloved England to. He knows that it was his last day as an England manager. England have failed. England senior football team won't be at the major International tournament for the first time since the 1994 World Cup in the United States.

After a few days of a so called hangover journalism, which included some good, constructive criticism but also some laughable suggestions (a letter to Blatter in which an author demands that England should be given a direct place in the World and European Cups), a thought how foreign players in EPL are to blame for England downfall, came up.

To make it clear what we're talking about we must determine what is branded as success or as a failure for one team. Success in football is a relative thing . For one it is the quarter finals, for others, nothing less than the final or only being a champion would do. But all in all, in football most of the times there is only one winner. Where is England in that story? Well they have managed to convince themselves and everyone else that they belong to the later group. Nothing less than a final. And if they fail to achieve it they start looking for excuses rather than the reasons. As I said, the later excuse that has come up is that influx of the foreign players is to blame for England underachieving. But how could that be? Were England champions in 2006, 2004 maybe? Or were they champions back in 1996 when the Championship was held at their soil? No.

Cristiano Ronaldo | Cesc Fabregas | Robinho | Fernando Torres

So what gives them the right to think they're the world class team? Some would say[i] “Well, the names like Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Terry, Ferdinand, J. Cole, A. Cole, Beckham etc.”[/i] If that's the case – how come foreign players have the influence on England national team then? Furthermore – not only that those players are brilliant players, but they are mostly the leading stars and main players in their teams. Sure foreign players have been bought more recently than in previous years, but it's not Vidic's fault that he cost about 7 million pounds and Rio Ferdinand about 30 million.

Take Brazil, Argentina, Germany or France for example. While the French league is struggling to keep up with the pace of other top 4 leagues their national team has been brilliant in the past decade. World Champions, European Champions, European semi finalists, World Cup finalists. We don't need to talk about Brazil's achievements and in Argentina's defence I will only say that they're the two times World champions and two times Olympic Champions. How about Germany? Where leading stars are foreign players and mostly foreign players which is not England's case? What's in common to these nations? The fact that they don't have such a strong league and that their young players seek their bread abroad. So saying that league strength reflects the strength of a national team is wrong. My Croatia proves that.

So the Premier League IS the strongest team in the world – true. The Premier League IS the strongest league in the world only because of foreign players – false. Even if it was true it wouldn't have any relevance with an English national team. If foreign players smother the young English talent, then why don't the English youngsters learn from the young Argentineans, Brazilians, Croats if you like and go to find their luck elsewhere in order to gain some experience before coming back to EPL? Maybe because they don't want to play for less money?

Now we've come to one of the real problems of England national team. England agents over rate their players, media can't wait for the same players to make a blunder to make them look like clowns and players haven't learned to deal with the pressure coming after making such mistakes - and that goes around the circle for quite some time now.

Foreign players don't come to England because they're better than homegrown players that much, they come because they're less expensive and with them or without them English Premier League is not the cause of England's constant failure, same as the Brazilian league is not the cause of Brazilian's success.

Written By: crooney

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