The Study of English Football [Part II] – How moving to foreign leagues would benefit English players

Just Football presents Part II of a series of articles by Andreas Vou looking into the state of English football at international level. In Part I we looked at how social and cultural aspects impact the English game. In Part II a look at that greatest of fears for English footballers – playing abroad.

We wonder why we are out-maneuvered, out-thought and out-played in major tournaments. After all, England taught the world how to play football, we have top class players in every position and we have the best league in the world.

It is that feeling of English superiority without any real justification behind it. Every other nation explores ways in which to adapt to the modern game but here a tendency exists to simply assume by ‘working hard’ everything will be solved. The reason why we can’t keep up with the modern game is because we are not part of it.

It is clear from the unimaginative one-dimensional football style of football the England national team plays that we need to adjust our approach. The Premier League’s intensity, speed and passion is great, very entertaining and our national players do so well in it as their attributes fit all of the league’s general requirements. But if at international level technique, tactical awareness and more thought instead of action is needed then the players representing England should be taught this too.

There needs to be a change in the culture and the best way of adopting a new culture is by immersing yourself into one, and you can only do that by living in another country, or in this case, playing in one.

At the time of writing (editor’s note – May 2011), there were only 65 English footballers playing abroad of which 43 are based in Scotland and none in any of Europe’s top leagues. Compare that with Spain, who have 127 plying their trade outside of their country in leagues such as the Premier League, Serie A and the Bundesliga.

With so few players moving out of the country one might think that Fabio Capello would have a difficult job in choosing his best 25 players for each game but statistics in fact show something very different. Out of all the players in the Premier League, only 40% are available for the English national team. By contrast, when World Cup winning coach Vicente del Bosque goes to check up on local talent at the weekends he knows that 77% of them are eligible for a call-up.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, English players are often overpriced, making it a lot easier for Premier League managers to prefer foreign players instead. Consider that you could sign David Luiz, Rafael Van der Vaart and Javier Hernandez for almost half the price of Andy Carroll, James Milner and Joleon Lescott.

Secondly, and as a result, those good-average English players are slowly weaned out and pushed down to either the bench at their clubs or down to the lower divisions. Paradoxically the problem with the lower leagues of England is that they are too good, in the sense that most clubs are financially strong, have good facilities and offer very good wages in comparison to other nation’s lower leagues.

With all these perks in mind, there is no great need to strive to reach a top level of football. The average salary for a Championship footballer in 2006 was £195,000 a year (£3,800 a week) and has surely risen since. As a result, those that drift out of the Premier League learn certain bad habits of the lower leagues, where good football is not always a priority and the comfort of high wages make it very difficult to find motivation. In some regard the lower leagues can be described as the recycling bin, where you may become something better but you can easily end up as waste.

Many good English players in the Premier League would benefit greatly from moving abroad. It makes a player much more cultured; it improves individual attributes – if for example a player moves to Italy his tactical understanding will increase, if he moves to Spain his technical aspects will improve etc.

The player will not just benefit on the pitch but off it too. In the World Cup we saw Germany’s captain Philipp Lahm giving an interview in English then minutes later in German. In terms of life experience and cultural understanding it would greatly benefit the individual and make English players aware that there is more to the world than just what happens at home.

In terms of a similar inward-looking nature, Germany is one nation that draws comparisons with England. All of Germany’s players at the 2010 World Cup at the time were based in their own country. So why should we send some of our players abroad if Germany are getting by just fine?

First of all Germany’s youth development system is superb, and the way German clubs operate has turned full circle since 2002 when the major network ‘Kirch TV’ which funded the Bundesliga since the early 1990s collapsed, leaving the clubs in a terrible state financially. The German club’s only solution was to get rid of their highly paid average foreign players and bring up youth players from their academies. This, accompanied with a massive reorganization of the youth structure, has seen Germany produce its best generation of young players for decades, allowing their kids to win major tournaments at every youth level in recent years.

Even if by some miracle the same were to happen in England, the need to move abroad should still exist as it is an education that would do a lot of English players a world of good.

Brazil are another example. A country renowned for the most wonderful attacking players with incredible skill, flair and technique used to have the “score one more than you” philosophy, even if they won 5-3 it did not matter. But now with more sophisticated tactics, a team from this period playing against the Brazil of old would set-up accordingly to hold a deep back line and hit them on the break behind their two centre backs as their full backs would be utilised as auxiliary wingers.

Their most common starting defense of the last few years has been Julio Cesar in goal, Maicon, Andre Santos, Juan and Lucio. The pattern? All, except left-back Andre Santos, play in Italy’s Serie A and Cesar, Maicon and Lucio all play for Inter Milan. While they all have the Brazilian touch, they all know how to defend and it is no surprise therefore that they all ply their trade in a country where catenaccio, a highly defensive tactical system, was created. Thiago Silva and David Luiz, the center back pairing that will replace Lucio and Juan in time for the World Cup in their homeland three years from now are based in Italy and England respectively.

Closer to home, Fernando Torres arrived at Liverpool in 2007 from Atletico Madrid as an uncut diamond. A scorer of great goals rather than a great goalscorer. In the Premier League he had the option to either stay as he was and remain a talented but not consistently prolific striker, or adjust to the leagues’ demands and become one of the best strikers in the world. Now an all-action center forward who puts himself about, relishes the big games and the only striker I know that makes Nemanja Vidic tremble. We would not have seen the same results if he had stayed in Spain simply because that league does not require the same characteristics.

Cesc Fabregas, being a starter at Arsenal from 17 years old, could have been bullied out of English football and gone back to Spain straight away but he added dogged determination to his incredible technique, vision and passing that made him one of the Premier League’s top performers of the last five years.

English players such as Glen Johnson, Michael Carrick and Adam Johnson are perhaps not as valued here but have attributes that would be much appreciated in Italy, Spain or Germany. They could all play at a high level abroad and be seen in a different light to English fans and to the national coach. Their technical ability would be more evident in other leagues that hold more value in this asset as opposed to the hustle and bustle of the Premier League.

The opportunity to compete for honours in major competitions could also be presented to players moving abroad from clubs outside England’s top bracket. Leighton Baines for example was linked to Bayern Munich earlier this season and if I was his advisor I would have told him to jump at the chance. It is time for English players to break out of their comfort zones and take more fearless risks in the pursuit of becoming winners.

Up next in Part III, we take a look at the role of the media and its influence in shaping the landscape of English football.

England, Germany, Study of English Football