England - Behind the times?

By Alan Stokes
October 22 2002

Is the England team so far behind the current leading national sides because of our archaic, pre-conceived ideas on how football should be played?

Take yourself back to your schooldays or if you are coaching a local Sunday youth side think about what particular attributes you look for in your outfield players.

As a general rule of thumb you will look for the tallest, strongest and least skilful players to act as your centre half duo. For your wingers you will choose the fastest players who can keep the ball at their feet. You will be inclined to decide your two central midfield players as the best all rounders you have available and, strikers apart, you will then look to fill the fullback roles with the players who aren’t big enough to be centre halves and who aren’t good enough to be either midfielders or wingers.

It is my view that this stereotyping of players is destroying the English game as it is carried through from grass roots level up into the professional ranks.

If you look at the players on display in the Nationwide League the majority will fit into these categories. This is where English football is going wrong and where we are light years behind the French, Brazilians and soon maybe even the Senegalese.

Instead of choosing players to fit into our stereotypical football model what we need to do is develop a total footballing team. In order to do this it would be necessary to take the most gifted footballers we have at our disposal from a young age and develop their footballing skills. It is after having developed the skills of the players that we should start to look at moulding them into a team.

In my view, Arsene Wenger is on his way to developing such a footballing team. The attributes of the majority of his players are that they are tall, powerful, and strong and are comfortable both on and off the ball. If he can get all of his outfield players with these attributes then he will have achieved the ultimate footballing team.

A few years back I went to see the English Schools Final at Molineux. On display were two excellent teams who looked totally comfortable in everything they done. They were allowed to express themselves in a manner I had never seen before. These youngsters were extremely gifted. The sad point to this is that nearly all of the players were on the books of various professional football teams. This gifted team on display instead of being nurtured and developed would be split up as they joined their respective clubs. It is at this point that these gifted, skilful players have all of their natural ability coached out of them as they are made to fit into what the coach at the club decides is the best for his team.

The coaches in this country with their certain mindsets are preventing our national game to develop.

We need to rid ourselves of this archaic stereotyping and think in terms of Total Football Development.