Re: Football Chat Thread : Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:39 pm
Dita's Slot Meter wrote:
As a bit of a side issue, would it be fair to say that England's dismal performances in the last decade, with what many regard as a pretty decent squad, is down to the fact that nearly all of our players tie themselves to the English League and so are pretty clueless when it comes to the technical skills of international football?
Would it have helped England as a side, if the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes, etc had made the move to the Spanish or Italian leagues, helping their technical abilities?
Certainly, if you believe the hype, there wouldn't have been a lack of big European clubs after these kinds of players, and so if they had gone for a spell, perhaps things might have been different?
Would it have helped England as a side, if the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes, etc had made the move to the Spanish or Italian leagues, helping their technical abilities?
Certainly, if you believe the hype, there wouldn't have been a lack of big European clubs after these kinds of players, and so if they had gone for a spell, perhaps things might have been different?
I don't know what you were expecting to change? I find it hard to believe that a move in country will suddenly develop things like composure, decision making and tactical awareness. Scholes managed to develop things like this through experience, but the majority of players can never gain these things. If we sent Lampard and Gerrard to Spain when they were 10-12 and asked them to learn things like that, maybe they would have changed, but it's very hard for players to completely change their natural game, a change in league would've done very little, IMO.
If you want a better example of how foreign football can develop our players, look at the alleged Englishman Owen Hargreaves. He came through the Bayern ranks and was completely unique to anything we had: an athletic player with positional awareness, versatility and sound ability. If we should be doing anything, we should be trying our utmost to push players to join foreign academies (if the opportunities arise). To completely contradict myself, however, I do feel English academies are coming on strong, largely because we're importing more foreign coaches with the right ideas and philosophies, so we will eventually 'catch on'.
