Play Station For Goal Posts

[Alan75]

Well it was no surprise that Steve McClaren was sacked as England manager following England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008. For all his short comings, you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.

After visiting a number of European countries over the years, I’m not surprised that Poland, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Spain, and Romania won their respective groups in the European Championship qualifying rounds.

One of the first things noticeable whilst travelling on the continent is that in the less affluent countries, is the number of kids playing football on open spaces or in the street. There are no all weather pitches for these kids, just stone contaminated dust bowls and pot holed back streets, where they learn to control any spherical object, be it a deformed pig’s bladder or a moth eaten tennis ball. One only has to look at Rovers very own foreign imports, South African, Benni McCarthy and Turkish maestro Tugay, to appreciate ball control.

A recent display of ball control, during the warm up by Tugay, was worth the admission fee alone.

In contrast, I have difficulty in naming any English player with such sublime ball control or with the ability to open up defences with the skill of foreign players.

English football is now reaping the rewards of the yuppie generation, where their offspring Fat Boy Wont Slim, wears a football shirt as a fashion accessory to perch himself in front of a screen, to bring himself up to date with the ramblings of a so called expert analysts, whose claim to fame is that they haven’t actually held down a job in the game after retiring from playing, enabling FBWS to discuss the latest issues and gossip on some internet message-board.

With an affluent society, where hard work appears to be the exception and even the average player can demand a healthy pay packet there is no longer a hunger for the game. Whilst it easy to cite the decline of the English game due to over paid prima donnas, you cant blame the players, the fault lies with authorities that let this develop, as they jumped on the financial merry go round, of selling the rights to TV companies and commercial organizations.

The current generation are however as much to blame as the authorities for the decline, where success and the quality of life is measured by material gain. It is much easier to plonk FBWS in front of the TV screen than to take him down the park for a kick about. The nearest many parents get, to involvement, is to act as banker and taxi service to ensure FBWS is first in the queue at the release of the latest Play Station game.

With the fashion over the years for clubs to appoint foreign managers, it is just as alarming as the lack of talented English players, that there is no English coach that has been able to serve an apprenticeship in order to emerge as candidate for the national post. One only has to look at recent club level appointments, to see the usual faces in the managerial merry go round.

If there is any joy from England’s failure to qualify for the European Championship, it’s that Rovers players will be out of the shop window this summer and there will be no pointless friendlies to interrupt the domestic league, which kicks off again this weekend with a trip to Fulham.

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