Southgate will suffer with his home birds
GARETH SOUTHGATE’S tenure as England boss began with a mission statement.
He wants to ditch the country’s long-established “island mentality” and embrace ideas, culture and experiences from the rest of the world.
But as long as English players refuse to play football outside the comfort zone of their own Premier League, Southgate’s hope will never be realised.
At the last European Championships, Roy Hodgson’s squad stood alone as the only one without a single player who plied his trade abroad.
England’s conquerors, Iceland, had no players in domestic football, hosts France had 80% of their squad at overseas clubs, as did Belgium.
Winners Portugal had a 65% “foreign” contingent and even Spain and Germany – both with powerful leagues of their own – each had 30% of their players located in other countries.
Of course, England now have Joe Hart playing for Torino in Italy. But he was forced to move there and will almost certainly be back in England next season.
At the last count there were 75 Englishmen playing in leagues in continental Europe and the chances are Hart is the only one you’ll have ever heard of.
Under-21 midfielder Lewis Baker is on loan from Chelsea to Vitesse in Holland. But the other 73 are desperately trying to forge careers in the lower divisions of countries such as Iceland, Finland and Belgium, having failed to make it at home.
There are more than 100 Englishmen playing in Australia, USA, Canada and New Zealand. But none are ever likely to be of use to Southgate.
One factor keeping players at home is that Brits are notoriously bad at learning other languages.
But Southgate himself acknowledges that the main reason for the inertia is money. There’s simply too much of it washing around the Premier League.
When players like Kevin Keegan, Gary Lineker, Glenn Hoddle, Ray Wilkins, Trevor Francis and David Platt moved to Europe there was an economic incentive. Now the economic incentive is to stay put.
Obviously England didn’t win any tournaments with those players – nor with others who moved overseas later like David Beckham, Michael Owen and Steve McManaman.
However, no one can argue that their experience of other countries didn’t make them better players.
But even that small trickle of exported talent has dried up and we’ve become isolated Little Englanders.
It will take more than Southgate’s laudable ambition to change that.