FA keep scoring own goals

BILLY CRAWFORD on body why the governing need to change their grass-roots approach from to the national team

time I thought this didn’t ring quite right, as everyone knows a copy is never as good as the original and surely we should be developing our own methods and our own system rather than just mirroring someone else’s.

Also, by the time these young players being trained in the Spanish “Tiki Taka” style had come through the system, football may have moved on.

This has proved true as now the high-pressing, pacey, counter-attacking German style of managers like Jürgen Klopp is far more in fashion.

The FA has also always seemed far more interested in finding a ‘Yes’ man rather than the right man.

Someone who buys into the system, has been on all the courses and knows to say the right thing might play well at headquarters but not on the pitch.

Managers from Brian Clough through Martin O’Neill to Harry Redknapp have been rejected because their face did not fit with the FA suits even though they may have brought us far more success on the pitch than Graham Taylor, Steve

McClaren and Hodgson ever did.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine Brian Clough sitting in a classroom for months on end filling out paperwork in the first place.

So after enduring four years of slow possession football under Hodgson and the brief reign of Allardyce, we now have Gareth Southgate.

I may be proved wrong, and indeed I hope I am, but Southgate sticks out as another classic FA pick who will do things the FA way without ever creating any ripples.

The FA need to appoint a manager who is a proven winner, who can command the players’ respect and who isn’t afraid to shake up the system.

A man who can create an English football identity and way of playing that suits the style of play these players are used to in the Premier League, not just someone who has the right qualifications on paper and knows the right thing to say at board meetings.

We also need to make it easier for aspiring coaches to gain their badges and start working in the first place, otherwise we will continue to see the shocking lack of English coaches at the top of the game that exists today.

Finally, we need to realise our strengths as a football nation and not simply try to copy other nations’ way of doing things. If we do this, we may see England returning to being a team that excites the nation and challenges in major tournaments. If not, we could be stuck in mediocrity for a long time.