…… It Is Now !!!

Those immortal words, uttered by Ken Wolstonholme in the closing minutes of the 1966 final, forty-five years ago.

The one and only time England have won the world cup.

For some reason every time since then we have had the arrogance to believe that we are entitled to win. Yet of the nineteen competitions we have only twice finished in the top four and that includes the 1966 win. Compare that to the record of  Brazil – 10 times or Germany – 12 times. Even France, Uraguay, Italy and Argentina have performed better than us.

How,  for a nation that considers football to be the national game, can that be acceptable. I do have some views on why it has occurred and the main one is that we have too many players from other countries in our national leagues. Look at any of the top teams and many of the player names are near unpronounceable. Like Tomasz Kuszczak, Mame Biram Diouf,  Dirk Kuyt, Nabil El Zhar … etc.  etc. And so the list goes on.

Surely this means that the pool, from which we must draw our international team members, is diluted since presumably these foreign players are not available to us. These foreign players, while playing for our national teams,  are denying English players a place and the associated skills and experience to be gained from playing at the national level.

I think that our football authorities need to shake up the national leagues and perhaps make some drastic changes to allow some home-grown talent to get the experience they need to play at the international level.

Or else it will be 48 years since the last win !!!

The next tournament will be held in Brazil, 2014 and the preliminary draw is tonight so the World Cup machine is already in motion.