Its the Culture not the Economy Its the Culture not the Economy

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Its not the Economy  its the Culture Stupid!The repercu sions of England v Germany in the last World Cup rumble on. Shortly afterwards, in one of our most respected broadsheets, four of its ablest sports writers were asked to lend their collective wisdom to solving the question thrown into sharp relief by the events in South Africa and then dominating, in one form or another, every radio or tv talkshow  how to save the national game?The journalists solutions, which mirrored the majority of the nations radio callers remedies  ranged from getting rid of the culture of exce s (too many contented over-paid underachievers), to changing the academy system, to introducing quotas on foreigners in the Premier League or to introducing a winter break to the football  Serge Ibaka Jersey calendar.Sorry, thats just wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again!What these, and the many other publicly-voiced solutions appear to have in common, is an unstated premise that the English game is fundamentally sound, but that it is a combination of external factors which maliciously conspire, to prevent Englands otherwise inevitable domination of international football!That premise not only flies in the face of all the objective evidence, but hides the fact that the much deeper roots of the true problem lie elsewhere. And the real problem is that even our self-appointed commentators/critics appear to be happy to spread the gospel rather than to question the orthodoxy!It could have been anyone of our sports writers, but it just happened to be Oliver Kay in the Times, who, when discu sing Theo Walcott, blithley argued:English footballers rarely show the wit of their overseas counterparts anyway  and Aaron Lennon and  Chris Boucher Jersey Wright-Phillips would hardly be top of the cla s  but Walcott, having not played seriously until he was 10, at least four years older than the norm, may have left gaps in his development.Is it only me who questions, just what is meant by the oxymoronic juxtaposition of serious and football, when applied to a ten year old, far le s to a six year old?Apparently, normal serious football includes FA training se sions for 9 year olds where they spend 40 minutes running around without the ball, developing their spatial awarene s (albeit now on much smaller age-appropriate pitches)! That the more ability you develop on the ball to buy you space and time, the more space and time you have to be aware of the po sibilities around you, appears to have been lost in the training manual, rumour has it, somewhere between the sections dealing with lo s of pacifiers on the football pitch and how much time serious footballers should leave between training and breast-feeding!Is it too much to hope, rather than 9 year olds being taught teamwork and how to pre s the space, that children (to use the technical term) would actually be encouraged to simply enjoy learning to do things with the ball. Surely there is more than enough time for organisation later  the perceived wit of their overseas counterparts is born of their being at least, permitted or at best, encouraged to attempt to develop the richest po sible football vocabulary, (the Cruyff turn, the Ronaldinho flick, the Zidane spin or whatever), which allows them to truly let their football speak. We need to allow our children to have the freedom to try and to fail and thus to learn. That is the only way they will ever do things with a ball which true football fans pay good money to see; so that in todays world of supremely well-organised athletic pre sing defences, where space is immediately  Terence Davis Jr. Jersey denied even to those merely in the vicinity of the ball, that they have the ball skills and unfettered confidence to impose their will, their skill, their wit.Whatever the particular perceived rights and obvious wrongs of the present mentality, its effects on the football culture are far-reaching. Gian-Luca Vialli in a recent book recounts how when David Beckham, perhaps the archetypal product of the modern English system,  Yuta Watanabe Jersey arrived at Real Madrid, the Brazillian players were all surprised by his ball skills, which they reckoned were the equal of any of theirs. I suspect its not just the Brazillians who would be shocked by that a se sment.But what is equally clear is that those English players who, for whatever reason, have not had the ability to expre s themselves with the ball at their feet drummed out of them at a very early age, are traditionally, never or very rarely, picked. For how else could the FA explain why Stan Bowles, Tony Currie, Alan Hudson, Rodney Marsh, Charlie George and Matt Le Ti sier have won only 42 international caps between them!But t is not just newspaper journalists and football managers who unquestioningly perpetuate this suffocating culture, which elevates pa sion over skill, and sacrifices creativity on the altar of organisation.It is also still constantly rammed home to every all too impre sionable wide-eyed young viewer or listener who hear tv commentator after radio commentator praising a player merely for covering every blade of gra s, as if he were a paid to be groundsman rather than a ball player!It is re-inforced by every negative condemnation of each and every failed attempt to beat a player with a piece of skill, with the threat that the players manager will have Jalen Harris Jersey  a go at him for merely attempting it, rather than having a go at him for not having practiced the particular skill long enough!And it is repeated and repeated with brain-washing regularity when every failure on a football pitch is bemoaned as due solely to nothing more than a lack of pa sion!You would hope that commentators at least, who are not paid for results on the pitch, would realise that if all you praise is endeavour, all you get is sweat!If any good will come out of Englands shameful humbling at the feet of Germany it will start with the general acceptance that what failed England on the pitch in South Africa was not the lack of the ability to try harder, but simply the lack of ability to play better.
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