Considering football is England's national game and we invented the sport and considering 55 million people live in England and 65m in the British Isles we are the fourth largest economy in the world and home to the premier league probably the biggest sporting commercial product in the globe considering all that those statistics are shocking. I am an Englishman and a proud one I support our national team but I have to agree we underperform to a ridiculous level. It has to be the fault of the FA which is failing in its primary purpose and instead just concentrating on screwing as much money as it can via the premier league almost all of which goes out of the game. I think we need nothing short of a revolution in English football diverting much of the TV money to grass roots football and the lower leagues and creating better academies like they have in France and Germany. The current model is broken in every way it's not just about the english football team but indicative of fundamental problems in the english game which is rotting from the bottom down.
Will better academies produce better players though? The top clubs spend a lot on their academies but rarely produce top class players - they buy them all from other clubs. Their is only so much coaching a player can absorb - surely, the main reasons for succeeding will be natural talent? The likes of Pele, Maradona, Puska, Best, rush, Suarez, Messi, Beckenbauer, Cruyff etc didn't benefit from hi tech academies.
We just need to accept that we are a small nation and therefore have a smaller pool of talent to choose from. Granted, some of them earn way in excess of their worth but that's just down to circumstance. A small country with 60m inhabitants shouldn't expect to be as good as larger countries.
I don't think we have under performed. If anything, we have over performed.
