Our beautiful game

ON A recent edition of Match Of The Day, every post-game interviewee, player, goal-scorer or manager had a surname ending in a vowel and spoke fractured English.

Surely, for sporting competition to mean anything it should have a strong, significant, territorial element, our lads versus the rest.

One wonders if the punters who pay through the nose for their place in Premier League stadiums ever ask themselves: ‘What’s the point?’

It’s phoney but because the worldwide franchises bring in big bucks for someone, it’s deemed harmless or even beneficial for our national game.

If the easy option of buying in overseas talent at the expense of concentrating on our own academies persists, I can’t see England coming anywhere near ever winning the World Cup again.

Why not limit the number of imported players to two per team? Then maybe those clubs with smaller chequebooks would have a sporting chance of winning some silverware.

J. HOWARD, Bury, Lancs.