Is he right? By my reckoning 16 of Germany's 23 man World Cup squad are playing in the Bundesliga and of their starting X1 last night, only Klose and Ozil are not playing in it. On the other hand, only 30% of players in the English Premiership are eligible for our national team.
He's partially right but, as is often the case when discussing why Germany are brilliant and England aren't, the whole story tends to be ignored.
In Greg Dyke's FA Commission Report (the one that thought it would be a good idea to introduce B-teams into a league between League Two and Conference National) an analysis was made of the number of players who played at least 50% of minutes for a top six club (whatever the definition of that is!) in one of English Premier League, Spanish
La Liga, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1 and the Italian Serie A.
The results showed that Spain had 42 players that met that criteria of which 24 had been picked for the Spanish national team in the previous year, Germany had the same (24 from 42) and England had 18 players in that selection of which 13 had been picked for the national team.
It's easy to think of Spain and David Silva, Juan Mata, Santi Cazorla and Cesar Azpilicueta all of whom play in the Premier League; and the same with Germany and Mesut Ozil, Andre Shurrle and Per Mertesacker. By comparison, the only England squad player to play outside England is Celtic's goalkeeper Fraser Forster. So could the problem not be how many English players are there in the Premier League but how many English players are gaining experience of foreign football styles in the top league's abroad? Eric Dier plays for Sporting Club (recently known as Sporting Lisbon) and England under-21. He moved to Portugal at the age of 10 when his parents got work there and stayed there when his parents returned. I wonder how long it will be before he gets a full England cap or if he'll be ignored because he doesn't play for one of the top clubs in the Premier League. Surely he can't be as immobile and unable to read a game as Gary Cahill and Phil Jagielka were!
While many have the view that introducing B-teams into competitive competition or reducing the number of foreigners playing in the Premier League is the answer because it mirrors the German way let's not forget some of the other implementations that Germany used in order to take their national team from being knocked out of Euro 2000
BY ENGLAND! to winning the World Cup 14 years later:
All clubs are 51% owned by members (ie supporters). Any one entity can only own 49% of the club. This is to reduce ownership by foreign investors who don't have the German national team's interests as a priority.
All 36 Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga clubs must run a youth academy to under-12 level.
The annual intake to each academy must include 12 players eligible to play for Germany. No Cesc Fabregas situations here! Cesc counted as a home-grown player by UEFA regulations but obviously couldn't (or didn't want to) play for England.
The cost to the Bundesliga clubs (80m euros) amounts to 8% of the Bundesliga annual income. The Premier League turnover for 2013/14 was £3.2bn
A top rated, 3-star academy gets an additional $400k in annual funding.
Each youth academy is run by UEFA-B qualified, full-time coaches and are inspected every three years by the DFB. Inspections cover school work as well as football training. If a club fails an inspection it loses its licence and cannot compete in the next season of Bundesliga.
The DFB set up 121 regional coaching centres to uncover any talent available in the country.
Germany has over 5000 all-weather 3G pitches, England has 369. In a 2011 English FA study into youth football, 84% of respondents complained that the major obstacle to success was poor facilities.
Germany has 6,934 coaches holding UEFA Pro or A certificates, England has 1,457. Germany has 21,731 coaches holding UEFA B certificates, England has 9,420
Six of the German starting team on Sunday (if you include Sami Khedira who warmed up but didn't play) played in the 2009 under-21 final against England. Only two of that England team (Theo Walcott and James Milner) were close to the England World Cup squad. Also in that England team were Kieron Gibbs and Whatever-happened-to-Micah-Richards. This shows that Germany values tournament experience at all age groups rather than fast-tracking players into the first team without any tournament experience. On a completely different tack, Lee "red card" Cattermole was in that England team...
So if England want to replicate Germany's success they need to introduce a lot of grass-roots coaching at a large financial cost. The Premier League can afford it but their interests are not the England National football team. It strikes me that amongst all the "foreign-player" hyperbole and the B-teams red herring, England will be a second- or even third-class footballing nation at tournament level until Manchesters City and United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are owned by English football supporters and when St Albans has an FA-funded coaching centre for all ages from 10 to 18. That's not to say that those five clubs, or St Albans as a region, are the answer to the problem but that both those scenarios will illustrate that the answer has been found and has been implemented.
