It's all foreign to me

It’s little over three weeks since Frank Lampard’s 20 yarder sealed the FA Cup for Chelsea and marked the end of another football season in England.

But with the fixtures announced and the players beginning to filter back from their holidays to Marbella, attention has already turned to next season. Inevitably, much of the talk amongst fans centres on what new signings their club will bring in.

And whilst there are no guarantees clubs will be able to hold on to their star performers one thing is for sure: you won’t need two hands to count the number of British players leaving these shores this summer. For British players continue to maintain an aversion to plying their trade abroad – something not shared by their Spanish, Portuguese and French counterparts.

Footballers often cite the short length of their career as justification for their huge wages. “We’re not in the game long, so we might as well make the most of it” they proclaim. Yet this mantra is rarely followed when it comes to seeking pastures new (and that’s really new Gareth Barry, not Manchester).

Sure, plenty of British footballers have found employment at foreign clubs over the years – the likes of Lineker, Platt and Hoddle were undoubted successes. But exports from the UK have been few and far between over the last 10 years, and even those that did take the plunge have experienced only mixed fortunes.

True, the wages in the Premier League probably outstrip those in many other European countries so it’s reasonable for players to argue they would be losing out by going abroad. But one must also assume that the players at the likes of Milan, Barcelona and Bayern Munich are not closing the curtains and hiding behind the sofa when the window cleaner comes to collect his wages.

It seems our players lack the willingness to try something different – a sense of adventure. Perhaps this is an indictment of our national teams’ lack of success at major competitions? Perhaps our play lacks the bit of flair or tactical know-how that could be procured by a season or two in the sun?

For all our sniggers about David Beckham, he has at least experienced football in four different countries. Although it could also be argued he hasn’t exactly immersed himself in foreign culture, even he will have expanded his horizons a little by leaving Manchester and sampling the different atmospheres, coaching methods and mentalities of Madrid, Milan and LA.

Some may argue that our players simply do not have the opportunity to go abroad – they are just not wanted. But with agents regularly engineering English moves for French, Spanish and South American players, it’s difficult to believe it couldn’t work the other way around.

Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard are the jewels in the English crown and would walk into most European sides. But even our lesser talented players could hold their own at big clubs across the continent – just look at the recent success of trend-bucker Matt Derbyshire at Olympiakos for evidence.

Ian Rush shipping baked beans to Turin and declaring Italy as being “like a foreign country” whilst at Juventus and Garry O’Connor’s reluctance to learn a word of Russian during his time at Lokomotiv Moscow probably didn’t enhance the image of British players abroad, but maybe it’s time for someone to break the mould.

With the weak pound and new 50% tax rate for high earners, more players may well be tempted to leave the UK this summer. It would certainly make for interesting viewing, and could possibly lead to the list of successful recent exports being longer than David Beckham, Steve McManaman and er...Vinny Sammways.