Trouble on England's Green and Pleasant Land?

So here we are again. If one day, while going about your daily business, you were to unwittingly overhear a conversation with the classic line ‘these foreigners, they come over here and take our jobs,’ the more rational of you might raise a smirk and denounce the ignorance of such an opinion without too much thought. However, the basic premise of such an ill-informed argument has now developed into a national debate after England’s ultimately disastrous Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. The subject first crept up when Sepp Blatter hinted at quotas. Then Sir Alex Ferguson, wily as ever, used the idea as a stick with which to beat title rivals Arsenal. Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown (remember him?) decided to weigh in with his two cents worth. But after the nation’s footballing hopes ended in failure, can the influx of foreigners into the English game really be looked upon as the root of the problem?

Well, for starters, the debate is hardly fresh, and we are not stepping on new ground when discussing such an issue. The argument is as cyclical as the seasons, arising whenever a scapegoat is needed, or blame is to be apportioned. No British teams in the Champions League semi-finals? Blame foreigners. England knocked out on penalties in an international tournament? Its those foreigners I say. A perceived lack of passion from overpaid prima-donnas? Its those pesky foreigners I tell you. But is it really so simple? Can they really be blamed?

The answer, quite simply, is no and the simplicity with which the argument is debated shows a distinct lack of judgement from a majority of sources. The reasons both for and against the topic have been mentioned at great length already (I too would rather watch Didier Drogba than Steve Howard, and a quota forcing Howard to play in the Champions League for Chelsea would be frankly embarrassing). But while the merits of foreign players plying their trade in the Premiership have been repeatedly discussed there are certain aspects of the debate that remain unmentioned, and the focus here is to concentrate on the overlooked issues.

The first such issue, as always, is that of money. There is an expensive premium to be paid for any club with intentions of investing in English talent, and this is not to be disregarded. Benni McCarthy, a goalscorer with a fine reputation and a Champions League winners medal to go with it, cost Blackburn Rovers just £2.5million pounds, half the price Sunderland paid for the far less experienced Michael Chopra and nowhere near the astronomical fee Tottenham offered up to secure Darren Bent a place on their bench. And contrary to popular belief Arsene Wenger has bought British once or twice, not least when forking out £10million pounds for ‘fox in the box’ Francis Jeffers. Perhaps he learnt his lesson then. When such market conditions exist it is only natural that clubs will look for a cheaper alternative, and with football now as big a business as any, this has certainly been the case. Indeed why not in a world where Matthew Upson is worth forty Kolo Toures? A remedy for this situation looks hard to find given that clubs will always be reluctant to sell their domestic talent for anything other than top dollar, but foreign imports cannot be blamed for the consequences. If there were less foreign players in the Premiership would the cost of English players decrease? Not necessarily, but it would almost certainly bring about a decline in quality. A deflation in this ‘English tax’ is unlikely to happen anytime soon, and so clubs are only encouraged to import players from abroad.

Another wholly relevant aspect of the argument that has remained unmentioned involves the issue of coaching. Sir Alex Ferguson aside, not one British manager has coached a so-called ‘Big Four’ club in the Premiership since the turn of the century, and only three English managers have ever coached a team in the Champions League. From Egil Olsen to Alain Perrin, coaches from overseas have been shipped in and handed the task of steering clubs forward and onto better things, with varying levels of success. The trend does not look like ceasing either, with Juande Ramos recently coming in to replace Martin Jol, Avram Grant replacing Jose Mourinho and, further down the road in West London, Luigi de Canio brought in from Italy to take up the QPR post despite Mick Harford showing progress as an interim manager post-John Gregory. This lack of faith in British coaches from chairmen across the country poses a worry in the long-term should it continue.

You need only look at the level of experience from the English coaches tipped to replace Eriksson after the World Cup to see there is a problem. The three major candidates Sam Allardyce, Alan Curbishley and Steve McClaren had little familiarity with European competition and no real practice of coaching in an environment with high expectation. True, the successes of each of these managers were all noteworthy, taking unfashionable clubs to new heights with limited resources. Bolton Wanderers twice made the UEFA Cup under Allardyce as he dragged a club from the second tier of English football and transformed them into the sort of robust outfit the likes of Arsenal could not deal with. Alan Curbishley’s value to Charlton Athletic can be shown no more emphatically than by the consequences of his departure – they were immediately relegated for the first time in almost a decade. Steve McClaren even managed to guide Middlesbrough to a European final, though ultimately they were humbled. But while McClaren did eventually secure the England job, it was done so riding the crest of a wave of nationalism amidst cries for an English manager to replace the supposedly inept foreigner Sven. And only then because Luiz Felipe Scolari wanted no part in the charade. After this World Cup appointment saga Allardyce, so distraught at not securing his dream job, quit Bolton Wanderers for Newcastle United – a step up in terms of expectation and fanbase but not a leap into the upper echelons of English football hierarchy, no matter what the Toon Army may have you believe. Curbishley ended up taking the reins at a West Ham United team in disarray. And when Jose Mourinho vacated the Chelsea post an array of foreign managers were linked, the inexperienced Jurgen Klinsmann to name just one, before an unknown Israeli coach by the name of Avram Grant was unveiled to the press. The best priced British manager for that job was Mark Hughes, but he was privately not even considered by Roman Abramovich.

Big Sam once famously stated that were he more glamorously named Allardici he would have his pick of high profile jobs, and though his claim looks bitter and self-congratulatory, there is a semblance of a point. Several managers in the lower echelons of English football are not getting their chance at higher levels after delivering success. Were the opportunities available to them, the tactical and technical level of British coaches naturally improves, which will only benefit the long term health of the English game. For their part, foreign managers will unsurprisingly lean more towards the markets they are familiar with, as best exemplified by the Spanish contingent now present at Liverpool under Rafa Benitez. With Juande Ramos at the helm it will be interesting to see just for how long Spurs maintain their strategy of investing in young English talent, a policy so admirably implemented under Martin Jol.

A further facet that is of paramount importance to the debate concerns the flawed catchment system for bringing in talent through Youth Academies. Academy laws state that a youngster must live within an hour’s travelling distance from the club – or 90 minutes away if between the ages 13-16. Although employed with good intentions, such arrangements only further push clubs to look to foreign shores for their youth talent, as they are restricted in whom they can sign domestically. Both Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have been staunch critics of the system in the past, and one only need look at their respective Youth Academies to note that if such an archaic structure continues, clubs with top scouting systems will continually search abroad for youngsters simply through force.

Ferguson also touched on the large financial costs in running Youth Academies under the current system, another dangerous hindrance in the long term. "It costs us around £4m to run our academy yet because there is a restriction in travel Manchester United and particularly Arsenal have to look worldwide in order to get the best young players into the club. There are countless flaws. Some are not even being run properly now because clubs are just not able to afford it." Such geographic trivialities restrict the likelihood of young British promise coming through at the highest level particularly if clubs without the available resources are forced to shut down their Academies, as Notts County were compelled to last year. Prior to closing down, the County academy had been rated the third best in the country by a Football League audit but without the necessary funding the inevitable occurred, to the detriment of many gifted young footballers in the local area. Under the catchment system the opportunity for those kids to continue their development at other clubs is drastically hindered, potentially leaving the next generation of talent lost in a sea of red tape.

So the issue is not as simple as looking at an Andrei Shevchenko or a Hossam Ghaly and lamenting that such players are somehow stealing all our jobs. The fault lines run deeper than that, and left ignored these other factors could severely damage the future of the English game. After all, it was Howard Wilkinson who predicted back in 1999 that the Academy systems would bring about a new, exciting generation of domestic youth and a World Cup winning English side within 10 years. He looks less like Nostradamus every day.