The Decline of English football - Harry agrees

Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp

It was only a few days ago when I wrote my article titled ‘The Decline of English football. So you can imagine my surprise when I woke up yesterday, and checked my Sky Sports News App to see an article titled ‘Harry’s Coaching Plea’. Intrigued, I proceeded to see that Harry Redknapp was expressing the same concerns as I had recently raised regarding our grass root level coaching.

This could mean one of two things. It could mean that Harry Redknapp was in fact a keen reader of SportsKeeda, religiously following my articles and decided to steal my opinions. Or, a more believable option is that it is actually a fact that our grass root coaching needs to be addressed in this country in order for us to produce better players in the long run. If a high profile character such as Harry Redknapp is stating this point, then to me, that just re-iterates what an important issue this is, and raises even more awareness that something needs to happen.

I’d personally like to discuss these issues with Harry, he raises very valid points, similar to mine albeit with rather different angles to what I addressed. Harry was quoted saying “Coaching philosophies must change if England are to compete with football’s elite”. Absolutely correct, they do. We need to look at producing technically brilliant players that other countries such as Spain and Germany have produced over the last ten years, whilst we’ve been left behind.

Why can’t we produce players of Iniesta’s calibre?

Redknapp then looks at the slightly different angles regarding what the problems might be. He says “Unless we start producing technically better players, and are willing to play from the back, retain the ball, and play like the top teams in the world, we’re never going to improve”.

So rather than looking at the in-depth problems of why our players are not confident enough to be expressive anymore, he looks into another problem we face; not being able to pass the ball out from the back. Now to me, this is something our previous England sides have done well. Look at John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and even Gary Cahill; they are all very good on the ball, and are prepared to stride out of the back four with the ball at their feet. And then in the past we have had players like Lampard, Scholes and Barry in front of them who are also very competent on the ball, and are willing to keep the ball, and pass it around. So I’m not sure if this is a big problem. Maybe in the Euros, yes, we could not keep the ball, but I believe that was a formation issue, and not playing with a holding midfielder that caused that, not the players. I think that most of what he’s saying is true, we need younger players who can do that, and that is a grass root issue.

Chelsea and England player Gary Cahill, who is very competent on the ball and is often seen bringing the ball out from the back.

Redknapp goes on to make a valid point regarding young players moving to clubs that play a different style, and do not use their potential to the full extent. He says, “They can set up Burton (FA’s centre of excellence), and work on skills and technique, but the problem is they then go to football clubs, and it depends on how they play. It’s no good having a kid who’s going to be the next Andrea Pirlo if he goes to a club that keeps lumping the ball from back to front 60 yards”.

I agree with this. You often see technically gifted players wasting away in the lower leagues because they don’t have the opportunity to show what they’re capable of, they wind up in a team that are tough-tackling long-ball hopefuls rather than technically good passing sides.

He goes on to say “Unless you’re going to encourage more teams to play from the back, and start to play football then we’re always going to have a problem”. So I guess his point here goes back to the grass root problem; we need to be teaching our new coaches at all levels to not only encourage players to express themselves but also teach them to pass the ball out from the back as opposed to booting it long all the time. That way, all of our coaches gaining their badges will leave the education experience with the skills and knowledge to coach a team to play that way.

Harry concludes the interview by stating that the overhaul of the system will be a long term process but in order for us to be playing the exciting football that other countries play then this problem needs to be addressed now, and we have to get English teams playing the same way and using the same style.

I think we as football fans can all agree that in order for England to get out there again, and compete with the best, the FA need to step up and change it’s grass roots philosophies, and they need to do it now. How many more big dogs will it take to come out and raise this point for them to react?