Stuart Pearce remarked recently that he thought that the FA’s new St George’s Park facility could help England end their forty-five year wait for a trophy. Until now England has been the only major European country to be without such a facility and Pearce says it will help with the training of British coaches and young players.
“I think St George’s Park could be the one single thing that could push us on, possibly for the next 100 years. It’s an exciting project. When I first came in to the organisation, I had problems. The analysis department was based in Liverpool, the conditioning department was based somewhere else, and as a manager you wouldn’t accept that at any club so why should we accept it at the elite end of football in this country? To have everyone under the same roof, to be able to invite young players in for coaching weekends, to be able to support our players and managers within this country to develop all under one roof, one venue, will be absolutely outstanding.”
In many ways Pearce makes a valid point; the infrastructure currently in place for the development of both players and coaches in this country is pitiful in relation to our continental cousins. And it shows in the stats; figures from 2010 showed that there were fewer than 2,800 English coaches who were in possession of Uefa’s ‘B’, ‘A’ and ‘Pro’ badges, it’s top qualifications. However Spain, Italy, France and Germany all had between 17,600 and 35,000. This makes for sorry reading indeed and not only is it an indication of why our international side consistently underperforms but also why the standard of English coaches is so poor.
It is imperative that we address this problem in the UK and the St George’s Park facility will go some way to addressing this problem. However unless our major clubs give English coaches a chance how are they ever expected to truly succeed? All of our top clubs look abroad for either their managers or directors of football. And when an Englishman is hired, such as Roy Hodgson for Liverpool, he does a poor job and is fired within six months.
The problem is that coaches and managers, just like players, can only develop so far without top-level experience. A player can have the best training from the best academy where he will learn the most is with experience at the top level. This scheme to help encourage and train new coaches will certainly have a positive effect but will we ever get to the stage where Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and the likes will be willing to give the top managers a chance? Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson are currently the only torch-bearers for managers at a high level and only Redknapp has any proven success in recent times.
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Twenty years ago there wasn’t a foreign manager in sight in the Premier League. Now, with the exception of the Glaswegians, there is barely a British manager in our league. As a club team, with a multi-cultural squad, the continental approach of some managers does work but in our national team we have seen under both Capello and Sven that an English manager would serve the qualities of our players much better.
Undoubtedly the continental approach of club managers can alter the style of play of our players but it is of no use if the top English managers are not used to managing our top players. Eventually our cubs will have to take the plunge and take a chance with an English manager. It worked well for Spurs but to be fair Tottenham were in danger of relegation before Redknapp. He has however proved his worth and if he does ever get the England post hopefully he can prove that English managers are good enough to perform at every level.
Ultimately though, whether our big clubs give home grown managers a chance or not all we can do is continue with projects like the FA’s current one. Before we can think about good managers we must address our lack of qualified coaches. From there hopefully we can more efficiently develop our youth prospects and in time see the arrival of a new era of English managers, how much time that will take however if they are rarely given the chance is another matter altogether.
Follow me on Twitter @H_Mackay
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