Untold’s submission to the FA enquiry: “sort out the coaching, sort out the FA”

In September Football Association chairman Greg Dyke announced a commission to ascertain why so few English footballers make it to the top level.

As we did with the Parliamentary commission of enquiry into football, wherein Phil Gregory wrote Untold’s reply, Untold has now made its submission to the FA.

This time I wrote it, and in doing so I greatly widened the terms of enquiry, and took on the FA itself.

Here’s a copy of my report to the FA.

———————————————-

On 9 June 2010 I published an article on the Untold Arsenal blog which sought to answer three simple questions:

a) Why is England so bad at football?

b) Why does Arsenal under Wenger use so few English players?

c) Why does the Netherlands, with its small population seem to do better than England at football?

I did the research, wrote my answers, and the resultant piece remains on line at http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/5146

Interestingly, this article has been used as the basis for articles by other writers in a number of places ever since.  Indeed a piece in the Telegraph a few months back bore a remarkable resemblance to my piece, and used my research.

What made the piece of interest I believe is that I don’t think anyone before analysed the population of various countries, the number of registered clubs, the number of registered male players, and the number of coaches with the top  qualifications, and then compared these factors with the success had in world cups.

And that is my main point here – and one that will occupy me all the way through this.   I did this research from information I could find in reference books and on line, and did it during the course of one day.  Anyone could have done it, but a detailed on line search suggested no one had done it before.

There were loads of opinions out there – many of which concluding that we needed more coaches, but no one had done the analysis to prove the point.   And that is the point.  Football is full of opinion.  But who is out there doing the research?

It is a point I will come back to at the end of this submission, but for the moment I will move on.

My analysis of the numbers found that the only correlation there is between world cup success and various countries, is the number of coaches in each country.   Everything comes down to this simple point, and you might now expect me to stop at this point saying, “well I told you so three and a half years ago.”

But in fact there is something else, and it is something that makes the present situation far worse.

Allied to this fact, and the ability of top clubs throughout Europe to bring in players from across the EU, (or in the case of countries such as Spain where registration of non-EU players is much more relaxed than in the UK, players from all over the world), there is the issue of changing attitudes within England to the national team and the national game.

You only have to look at many an England game to see that the supporters are not people who support top English clubs, but they are supporters of smaller clubs from lower divisions.

Of course there is nothing wrong with this.  I support Arsenal because I was brought up near the ground.   But I also support Poole Town, because my parents moved to Dorset when I was 11, and I went to watch my local team, and I support Torquay United, because theirs was the last ground I visited with my father on several occasions in the last years of his life.  Also, when there is no Arsenal match for my pal and I to go to, we go and watch local non-league and lower league clubs.

So I support competitive league football in my part of the East Midlands, and I support Arsenal, and I support Poole Town and Torquay United – but I don’t support England, even though I am a citizen of the UK born and brought up in London, and then Dorset.

And in this I am not alone.

Now I think you should be considering this point, uncomfortable as it may be, because I believe my position is widespread, even though it is not one that is widely recognised or reported in the media.   I support football, I don’t support England.

There are four key reasons why I, and many others, don’t support our native country at football.

First, in terms of quality, the football I watch as a season ticket holder at Arsenal is far better technically than the football I see England play.

Second, time and again I have seen players of the club I support injured and so removed from my club, through playing for their country.  In this complaint I make no particular suggestion about England, but think of any country.  Belgium and Vermaelen, the Netherlands and Robin van Persie….  When it is an international break, all I do is hope and hope that none of the Arsenal players involved is injured playing for his country.

Third, I am horrified by the actions and attitudes of Fifa, to whom the FA give allegiance.  The corruption, the vast sums of money taken from host countries, the total lack of ability to deal with racism, the sexist attitudes… everything about Fifa horrifies me.   And if I were not horrified enough by Fifa, the action of Fifa in arresting and imprisoning for several days half a dozen young women in South Africa for the crime of wearing t-shirts advertising the wrong beer, was the final straw.

Of course it is not the FA’s fault that Fifa is like this – but the FA gives allegiance to Fifa, and the argument about changing Fifa from within is ludicrous – there is not the slightest chance of this, even with the UK’s special position within Fifa as the founding nation.

Fourth, if I had any faith in the FA as an organisation able to deal with the politics of football I think I lost it during the bid for the world cup where, we were told, England had a strong chance, and then actually got two votes, which I gather were the votes cast by England and Australia.  It is a bit like the Natural Law Party suggesting it has a chance of winning the general election, and then being surprised when it loses its deposit in every seat.  It was obvious to everyone else that the England bid stood no chance and yet vast amounts of money that could have been spent on football was thrown at the bid.

So there it is.  The coaching system is unresolved, the quality of international football is not as good as that which I see at Arsenal, international managers worldwide act irresponsibly with players, the FA gives credence to Fifa and is naive in its dealings with Fifa.   As a result the FA has lost any sense of credibility as an organisation capable of running football.

The situation is however redeemable.

First, the coaching needs sorting out.

Second, stop wasting precious funding on gifts to Fifa representatives or sending delegations to Fifa.   Be part of Fifa if you must (although I’d prefer it if you were not) but stop pitching for tournaments and use the money you generate entirely for the football clubs whose interests you look after, and to lobby other European countries to take a new stance about Fifa.

Third, sell Wembley, cut your losses, and use the money for grass roots football.  I know you spend money on grass roots football – I want you to spend more.

Fourth, respect the fans who ultimately pay for the FA, by refusing to play international friendlies at times that interfere with the league calendar – even if Fifa says they are designated international weekends.

Fifth, recognise that you have a credibility issue.  The fact that on your form that I have filled in to offer these thoughts had no box to tick for “writer on football” or “blogger” shows how out of touch you are with the way things work these days.  I run Untold Arsenal and the History of Arsenal sites, with a few friends and we get over 750,000 visits a month to the two sites.  It is a huge audience, and we put out a message akin to the recommendations given above on a regular basis.

And yet you don’t even recognise the blogger or the writer on football as a person who might be able to contribute to your debate, and so I am left registering myself as a season ticket holder and  “other”.

The power base of football debate has moved on.  It is no longer in your hands, nor even in the hands of the media.  If you read some of the blogs you would know how bloggers are leading the debate in many cases and running rings round the media.

If you think back to the demise of Rangers FC in Scotland, you might recall that while the media all towed the party line that there was nothing wrong at Rangers, the bloggers publicised the criminal activity in the club day after day.   When the tax case finally exploded the papers jumped on the bandwagon but no one was taken in.  It was the bloggers who reported the truth day after day.

Now one of the biggest talking points in Premier League football is the bias of the referees, and many detailed analyses of the persistent bias of the refs (reports prepared by referees) have been published by blogs such as mine.   Even Mr Wenger referred to us in this regard a few weeks back.

The media hardly touch this, although they are just starting to see that they might doing another “Rangers tax case” job to themselves.

So my point is that if you believe that the mainstream media are really at the heart of the debate of the future of England as a footballing nation, you are looking in the wrong place.  The real debate, engaging massive numbers of hard core fans, is happening elsewhere.  And if you want to re-engage with football supporters all over the country you need totally to re-think how you address the football world.

Which leads to this final point.  A point that is symptomatic of all that is wrong with the FA and the way it runs football in England (and hence by implication the way it handles the England team).

A month ago I went onto the http://www.thefa.com/fa-youth-cup/more/history site to find out a little about the history of the FA youth cup.  I had been disappointed that you did not record on your site all the results for this season in the youth cup, but a good look at the history section I thought might help me out with my research.

The site says

FA Youth Cup Winners
Check out the full list of winners of The FA Youth Cup since the competition began in 1953. Click here for more

FA Youth Cup History  
It’s the competition that puts the stars of tomorrow in the shop window, but how did it start? Click here for more.

Back In Time  
United had Beckham, Butt and Scholes, but it was Leeds who triumphed in 1993 in front of 60,000 fans. Click here for more.

There are six links there.  None of them work.  I wrote and told the FA a month ago.  The FA didn’t reply.  The links are still broken.

And that takes me back to my opening point about research, and my final point about caring about fans.  If the FA can’t even provide basic information about a competition it runs, if the FA can’t actually get its web site to work on the minimal amount of information it has about one of its own competitions, then what faith can any of us have that the FA is going to do anything in terms of research or get anything right?

So, to give you an answer in one paragraph: Revolutionise the coaching, and look at yourselves from top to bottom – from your association with corruption via Fifa through to your inability even to provide minimalist information on your web site.

The answer is

a)      sort out the coaching

b)      do proper research

c)      recognise that the people you need to liaise with are the fans, not the media, not the high and mighty.

 

The fans have voices now, and you have lost their goodwill.   You have to win hearts and minds, and you are at the moment not even on the starting blocks.

 

The situation is not static, waiting for you to act.  It is a mess, and it is getting worse each day.

 

Tony Attwood

Untold Arsenal