During the dark days of the McClaren era it seemed that the prophecy of a ‘Golden Generation’ of English footballers had been woefully misplaced. England failed to qualify for Euro 2008 and there was much hand-wringing with regard to an apparent decline in English football. (Part of the reason was deemed to be the surfeit of overseas players in the Premier League which limited opportunities for English players.)
However, this maudlin perspective was contradicted somewhat by the buoyant showing of English clubs in the Champions League around this same period. At least one English club has made the Champions League final every year since 2005; whilst foreign players were prevalent in these sides, there was still a strong English contingent overall. The starting players from 2008 alone, when Manchester United played Chelsea, could have comprised nine members of an England outfield. These could be supplemented by Steven Gerrard who captained Liverpool in both the 2005 and 2007 finals.
The graphic shows an English Champions League outfield X from 2007/08. The team actually falls together really well, with every player in their regular position. Owen Hargreaves (who is likely to miss World Cup 2010) is usually a central midfielder, but did play on the right of midfield for Man Utd in the 2008 final.
Jermaine Pennant, who started the final for Liverpool in 2007, is the principal substitute. He currently plays in Spain for Real Zaragoza and seems well out of the England reckoning. Peter Crouch who came off the bench in the same year would be an additional subsitute, whilst Scott Carson gets closest to the keeper’s jersey by virtue of being an unused sub back in 2005. Paul Scholes and Jamie Carragher could also have pushed for a place in this team, but they have both retired from international football.
Of the six English teams to reach the CL final in the last five years they was a total of 20 Englishmen starting out of a possible 66 (30%).
To put that into perspective against the other finalists from the last decade:
Spain 32/66 48%
Italy 23/44 52%
Germany 11/22 50%
France 6/11 55%
Portugal 10/11 91%
It seems other teams have no problem coming up with a starting XI that is around 50% home grown yet only one of the six English finalists (Man Utd in 08) could field more than 5 Englishmen.
All five of those national teams mentioned are currently ranked higher than England and England have never beaten one of those five teams in a major tournament since beating an abject Germany 1-0 in Euro2000.
Do Premiership managers supplement their squads with foreign players because the English players aren’t good enough or are English players not good enough because there are too many foreign players in their squads, reducing their opportunities?
Premiership managers are paid to win club level games, not international games, so they have no incentive to train and play home grown players. I’d like to see a scheme whereby for every cap a player earns, some FA funds are given to the team that trained the player up. Maybe that could be the carrot to accompany the stick of an imposed quota system.