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Polishing diamonds or capturing slaves?

4:30pm Thursday, 10th September 2009

Following the transfer ban handed down by Fifa on Chelsea last week, there has been voluminous discussion in the media (and no doubt down the pub) about young 'foreign' players entering the English game. The Fifa ban regarding the Gael Kakuta move from Lens will be appealed by Chelsea at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, but the wider questions about the ethical issues involved and the (apparent) dearth of home grown talent have dominated.

Apparently, it was all different in 'the old days'. English clubs grew their own crops and harvested them with seasonal regularity. Of course, there was always a few 'foreign' players mixed in - from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic - but basically it was English players in English teams. Yes?

Well, no, actually. From the moment, Liverpool FC won the league title in 1901, with a team entirely made up of Scottish players (known as 'the team of Macs'), it was clear that 'shortage of local (ie English) talent' was a pressing matter. In fact the early period of the professional game was often dominated by stories of the 'tapping up' of superior Scots players - so advanced in football skills that they were called the 'Scottish professors'.

The question regarding how good our home grown talent really is (or even ever has been) gets brought into sharp focus by England's classy cruise into qualification - eight wins from eight games - for next summer's World Cup. It may have been a fairly easy group to work through, but beating Croatia, 5 - 1, on Wednesday night excites the ever-ready English optimism about winning the greatest prize

It's an optimism which ignores history. Though the English game is vigorous, pacy and attractive (to audiences both at home and abroad), the inescapable reality born down on the nation who fathered football is that, at the very top international levels, something seems to be missing. 'Show us your medals', say the players one to another. If nations did that, the English would have but one (home win) to display for over a hundred years of international competition - the first half of which England more or less refused to take part in.

When we did finally join Fifa in a World Cup, in 1950, we were sent packing rather quickly by a USA team made up of part-timers. The brief flowering of England, from 1966 - 1970, was a followed by a decade of qualifying for nothing. In the Premier League of international football, England are a mid-table club, very rarely able to break into the elite group which includes Brasil, Italy, France, Germany and a few others.

This all points to an underlying - if unpalatable - truth: neither individually, nor collectively, do we produce significant numbers of 'extremely good' players. Maybe that's why some of the Premier League clubs spend such time and energy tracking promising young players abroad? These clubs have to compete at an 'international' level in the Champions League and, it seems, they lack confidence that England can produce home grown talent good enough to succeed there.

In the whole post-war period, when it comes to the very top level - a class which includes those of the calibre of a Maradona, Pele, Cryuff, Platini, Zidane et al - have we English produced anyone who could sup at the same table? One claim to such fame is George Best - but he was Northern Irish, and consequently had no experience even of competing at the top international level. And what did Gascoigne win? Whether it will prove any different for Gerrard and Rooney - two players who may be within touching distance of greatness at this level - is another matter.

Yet the nation waits in perennial expectation, as England moves towards South Africa and WC2010. We've got a good team, we tell ourselves; it will be winter down there and we do well in the rain..... But isn't it really only our abiding faith that in football anything can happen and quite frequently does, that keeps us going?

You've only got to win seven games on the trot, after all. Piece of cake.

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