HERR Sepp Blatter might not be the epitome of probity, fair-mindedness, good governance and altruism, however, just occasionally, fat Swiss speak truth rather than with forked tongue.
He did just this this week, after being wined, dined and having his back side well-licked by those other fine examples of the virtues expressed in paragraph one, above, the (English) Football Association.
Sepp told it to them straight - England will never win the World Cup so long as they allow their Premier League to be dominated by foreigners. In this instance, I think Herr Blatter has a point, although, it should be pointed out that, on the single occasion thus far that England has won the World Cup, there top league teams' line-ups were dominated by "foreigners", if you accept that Scotsmen are "foreigners" in English football. For, back in 1966, Scotsmen such as Billy Bremner, Denis Law, Jim Baxter, Dave Mackay and the rest were, in Old Red Nose's great phrase: "the Master Race" in British football.
Of course, it goes without saying, the men who run the English Premiership are so far up their own arses, Blatter's message will be ignored; for as long as the Murdoch Media Empire bank-rolls English football at the top end, the English "blazers" will continue to prefer a sleek, foreign-trained import to a home-grown one, and to Hell with England winning the World Cup.
This is not, by the way, a "let's all laugh at England" point of view. At least, the foreign imports into the English leagues are by and large better quality than the cheap knock-offs which we tend to import into Scotland. It is in our favour that, financial reality has bitten into Scottish football and we can no longer afford to buy exotica and will increasingly have to breed and groom our own players - getting them to work harder and learn better technical skills will be our biggest problem.
Building a successful club or international side is fairly simple. You start by building a strong spine: reliable goalkeeper, dominating central defender, one midfield general and a reliable goal-scorer. You then augment this central spine, add a soupcon of good coaching and, hopefully, it works.
The trouble with the English Premiership and to a lesser extent, the SPL is, too-many of the four key positions are filled with foreigners. Until we get English or Scottish-born and raised players into the key roles at club level and able to transfer their prowess to the international arena, we will struggle.
This problem has been understood for years, everywhere except in the boardrooms, where the final yea or nay to the recruiting decisions are made. Add the in-built laziness of the majority of our coaches, who would rather recruit the foreign-trained players who are comfortable on the ball and have a good work ethic, than the lazy British-bred players who, in many cases, cannot comfortably trap a bag of cement.
MANCHESTER City skipper Vincent Kompany had the red card he received at the Emirates on Sunday rescinded on Tuesday - and quite rightly too. I appreciate that proper tackling has become an endangered art over the past decade or so, so it was good to see a cracker of a cruncher, in my view wrongly punished by a red card, recognised for what it was when the incident was reviewed.
The waning of the tackle has become an unwanted aspect of the influx of foreign players in recent years. As Corporal Jones might observe: "they never liked it up 'em" and the rolling-around and playing mortally wounded which was so-many of the big money imports' answer to a good old-fashioned British tackle has, gradually, seen that element of our game fall into disrepute.
I fully accept that with some referees seemingly intent on making football a non-contact sport, and yes, there has been a gradual erosion in the acceptance of tackles, as a result of the brutal "anything goes" days of the 1970s and 1980s, but, if you do away with the tackle, you kill football.
I might observe here, rugby is now paying the price for the absurd decision to outlaw "real rucking", whereby, if a fallen player lay on his opponents' side of a ruck, he was given a good kicking, but seldom complained.
So, it was good to see Kompany's tackle pass muster in the video room, if not on the park.
Herr Septic and his coterie of torn-faced trumpets back in Blatterville are far to old to care about the bootlickers of Engerland and their outstretched palms. What age is he now, 103? He cannae be that much younger than your good self, so senile dementia has well and truly taken root in that vast snow-filled crevice he laughingly calls a mind.
ReplyDeleteYou are right (again damn you) so far as to say that with Johnny foreigner filling the ranks where decent Scottish / English players should be plying their trade, the national sides have no chance in winning much at all. However, on average, the ratio of excellent non-Scottish players captured by both Celtic and that ex-SPL team that went bust recently, their name escapes me, has been superb!
With that said and without detracting from the crux here, it does not solve the international issue which everyone other than the blazer squad saw coming 15 years ago.
The solution? Bring them on from our own countries youth, invest in them via the academies and coddle them. Teach them the ways of old. Reintroduce them to the delights of the 70's when passionate men played for the badge on their chests instead of the money in their pay packets. (Or in R*ngers (RIP) case, the oul brown envelope) It would take ten years, but think of the results that we could achieve if we supported our youth and stopped the flow of foreign players coming in and stealing our thunder.
Take Fraser Forster for instance, written off twice by unemployment castle, ridiculed for his lack of skills, laughed at when he signed for Celtic. Now look at him... he has to be in the running for Engerlands #1 shirt. Kal Naismith, the Sevco young un has ridden swiftly through the youth ranks and is soon to become a player amongst players. The talent is there, we just need to encourage it.
I have little to say about English fitba and their tackling styles other than you go in hard to win the ball, not to be malicious. On this occasion the right decision was made. But it is a man's game... we should never lose sight of that fact.