From Rhys Jaggar:
I was in Manchester when Utd played Bayern in Barcelona.
We were doing a live project at a company down near Macclesfield, so I arrived at a pub to meet MBA colleagues still in a business suit.
In the last 4 minutes of the game, I was drenched twice with beer as those in the upper gallery showered those below as spontaneous bedlam erupted in the bar.
Out on the streets afterwards, you could have been in Buenos Aires, in Italy, in other Latin places where warm demonstrative joy is a matter of course. I kid you not, someone shinned up a flag pole on the building opposite and hung up a pair of underpants. Horns were blaring everywhere, the streets were filled with celebrants and I remember writing to an Argentine pen pal I had at the time that ‘the British have suddenly turned into warm Latins’….
What your article does reveal, however, is how so many other magnificent sporting achievements achieved by the British, including organisational structures which put English football to shame (e.g. in cycling, rowing, sailing with signs of it emerging in athletics, tennis, gymnastics, cricket, rugby) simply are not accorded the same value in terms of ‘unforgettable moments.
How about this list:
1. Steve Redgrave winning 5 Olympic Gold Medals in 5 successive games.
2. Nick Faldo pulverising the world’s golfers in 1990.
3. The British athletics squad pulverising the best of Europe in 1986, 1997 and 2015. In 1986, the men’s team won every track event, bar the 200m, from 100m to 5000m. Including a clean sweep in the 800m.
4. The British mens team won the Davis Cup in 2015 and are still on to defend it this year despite Andy Murray taking a rest in the QF (admittedly, so did Novak Djokovic…)
5. British Track cycling became, within 15 years of a new broom in 1997, the dominant global force and have subsequently expanded to become the dominant stage racing team in the TdF through Team Sky, with 4 wins in the past 5 years.
Perhaps England winning the Rugby World Cup against Australia vaguely had a similar effect on national pride, but it wasn’t as potent.
What it seems to me is that this obsession with 1966 is due to the complete lack of success since. It is a yearning, rather than actually doing anything about it.
English football is structurally designed currently to fail the national side.
1. The majority of leading clubs in England are owned by foreigners, managed by foreigners and staffed by foreign players.
2. The path from youth training set ups through professional development to aged 21 – 23 on to top global player simply doesn’t happen very often. The exceptions like Dele Alli and Harry Kane are just that: exceptions.
3. Salary structures for 20 year olds are so ridiculous that it attracts those interested in money, not glory.
4. Obsession with winning at a young age prevents the necessary technical development to compete globally as adults.
5. Sky TV is solely interested in a global game owned by global billionaires, not a sport with affiliation to nation states. I have no affiliation to an American brand and never will. I trust my eyes, not what I read, after all.
Ironically, England would be more likely to succeed more regularly if the Chinese stole all the best players and a CPL became the dominant global league.
Then England would develop youth players and the best would be exported to China to pit their skills against the world’s best. That’s what the Germans do, the Spaniards do, the Argentines do. The Brazilians do.
I don’t somehow see Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, West Ham, Man City, Spurs etc just rolling down and dying just yet……..so the English supporters remain the dominant English part of English football.
Until they can’t afford to go any more and it becomes tourist income, most of which will not end up at the Exchequer as the foreign-owned corporations ensure they don’t pay any corporation tax.
Myles says:
Spain is a producer nation, Rhys, because doing the Uefa badge there costs 700 euros.
In England the same badge costs £7,000.
In a typical UK school, the coach is the geography teacher.
That’s why we don’t produce good footballers.
Also, we need an academy that teaches coaches.