Putting the future first

Cast your minds back to the autumn of 2007 and the immediate aftermath of England’s 3-2 defeat to Croatia at Wembley.

The media were busily conducting their autopsy of English football, calling for an overhaul of coaching methods and proposing a limit on the number of foreign players plying their trade on these shores.

It was argued that the conveyer belt producing young English talent had ground to a halt, and the long wait for a major trophy would continue for many years to come unless something drastic was done to bring young players through our clubs again.

Fast forward nearly two years and the England under-21 team find themselves in the final of the European Championships, having beaten favourites Spain and held co-finalists Germany to a 1-1 draw despite fielding a second string side and having nothing to play for.

By the time you read this, England’s young stars are likely to have either covered themselves in glory or conformed to national stereotype and bowed out as gallant losers. Whatever the result of the final, we should be proud of their achievements and a fair few premier league teams should sit up and take notice.

For the under 21 team have proved that the reaction to England’s defeat to Croatia was knee jerk at best, ridiculous at worst. Although our young players may not be as creative or technically able as some of our southern European counterparts, they do possess equally important attributes and have the ability to play at the highest level.

It’s something that premier league clubs should be aware of. However, the much fabled “top four” are curiously under-represented in England’s squad for the under 21 tournament. Of the squad, only Kieran Gibbs, Theo Walcott, Michael Mancienne and Fraser Campbell play their club football for England’s four major clubs. And of those, only Walcott could really argue that he is a regular.

Liverpool for example, have failed to produce a young English player that has become a regular starter since Steven Gerrard emerged on the scene ten years ago. Their manager Rafa Benitez remarked on the club’s capture of Glen Johnson for £17m that because of the new champions league rules, he had to buy English and that to buy English players you have to pay over the odds. It was a naïve comment that bordered on idiotic.

Benitez has made little, if any effort to blood young local players into his squad. That is why he is now finding a sizeable chunk of his transfer budget is having to be spent on a good, but not brilliant right back purely because he is English.

Managers need to have both more patience and more faith in the young players coming through their academies. As budgets are tightened, it’s not going to be possible for clubs to continue to buy their whole squad. The smaller members of the premier league will have to look increasingly to their academy sides for first team squad members, but the bigger clubs should also be casting their net closer to home.

The recent exploits of the England under-21 team prove that our players are as talented as their counterparts in Spain, Germany and Italy. If clubs are to continue to be competitive amongst the backdrop of a recession and clubs being bank-rolled by billionaire owners, maybe it’s time for them to make their real investments in their own youth academies.