Wolves academy director Kevin Thelwell insists English youngsters – and their coaching – are as good as any in the world.
With a big international weekend looming, the focus has again switched to England’s chances, as they embark on their World Cup qualifying campaign at minnows Andorra.
Thelwell has watched the emergence of dozens of English players in his time at Preston, Derby and Wolves.
Criticism of the national team for the perceived inferior technical ability of our players continues to threaten progress throughout the game.
But Thelwell feels the development strategies now installed by the FA, along with the focus at grass roots level, means we have as good a chance as anyone.
He said: “Fabio Capello has negated the argument about foreign players being more techniquely proficient than our players.”
“He believes they are just as good and they certainly add value in lots of other elements. With that being the case, there really is no reason why English players aren’t as good as anything else in the world.
“That’s a policy I’d like to see taken forward. We hear a lot of foreign players being technically stronger than our boys.
“I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe we have enough quality in our coaching and enough raw material to really develop players to play Championship and Premier League football.
“The key is, firstly, the level of contact time that the players have to develop their abilities. In Europe, the amount of practice time is much higher. This therefore lends itself to the creation of more highly skilled performers.
“However, with the changes currently taking place in education and the provision for football clubs to work more closely with schools, I’m certain that such time issues will begin to be minimised.”
Thelwell, who replaced Chris Evans in April, does admit the flood of foreign talent into our game has made it harder for English players to be noticed.
He said: “The foreign option is often cheaper. “We have to be more nationalistic about what we do, and – certainly in terms of our club – maintain the youth-led philosophy we’ve had that’s been so successful.
“The clubs that do that tend to have a lot of success.”
12 Comments
Im sorry im really confused by this article, your saying on one hand that English players are as good as foreign players as suggested recently by Capello (well of course he would say that) and at the same time they are not as good because basically we coach kids differently in this country?????
Based on the shambles that is our current national side ill go for the second option i think. Its really quite simple English players are not as good as foreign players and it is because of the way they are coached as youngsters. Fast, powerful, athletes with a big heart but with minimal skill.
Then why are there so many foreign players in the UK ?
2. Because of the money and the possibility to compete with the best. But it’s the absolute elite of players from all over the world that comes. (And it’s not for the weather;-)
I could take issue with everything in this article, but will comment only on one, namely the FA’s development and focus at grass roots.
The FA gives no support whatever to grass roots. This can be demonstrated by 2 examples.
Three years ago the FA paid Newcastle £5M because one of their players was injured on England duty; this despite both club and player having insurance in place.
Meanwhile, the lowest grass roots level (the hundreds of boys clubs around the country) receive not one penny of financial assistance. The parents pay for everything; balls, equipment, kit, hire of municipal pitches and travel costs. It is only through the good graces of the parents that these boys clubs still exist.
It is not surprising to see this article today. It is just the E & S trying to get involved in the Mankey City situation.
2 Carolina Wolf
The leagues in the UK are probably the highest payers in the world. The foreign players who are attracted to play in them are, in general, the best in their leagues. Given the huge numbers of players our managers have to select from who play abroad it is small wonder that we have teams with only a few native players on the books.
This I am happy to say will not affect The Wolves who are sensibly enlisting GB based players. Long may this policy continue. For in my belief this is the only long term answer to the national teams problems. The development of our own young players.
Up The Wolves
I for one am greatly in favour of a restriction being placed on the number of foreign players being allowed in any team.
The main victims of restrictions on the number of foreign players would be players from the smaller countries like Ireland, Norway, Denmark, etc., and possibly Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
If there are restrictions, who are teams going to sacrifice? The world-famous Italians, Spaniards, Brazilians, French and Argentinians will be safe, and the first people out of the door will be the players from the smaller countries.
Blaming foreign players is just a rotten excuse for our national-team failures, which have been continuous since 1966. England has a squad of twenty or thirty top-class players–they can only benefit from weekly exposure to the some of the best players in the world.
If we want restrictions then graded salary caps, e.g., only three players can be paid over £25,000 a week, and on transfer fees would be more effective. Would Berbatov and Robinho have been sold if there was a £15m limit on transfer fees? A salary cap might also drive some of our best players to Italy or Spain, which could only benefit our national team.
One of the features of the present situation is that there are so many East Europeans and Africans, with a smattering of West Europeans and South Americans, in clubs’ reserve teams. Why don’t our young players respond to that by getting jobs overseas? Too many of our young players have a bad attitude: they want to be paid more than East Europeans and Africans, but they are not prepared to shift their asses and find jobs in Italy, Spain or elsewhere at slightly lower salaries than they could get in England.
The administrators of English football need to be aroused from their complacency and incompetence! Especially the bunch of jokers at the FA who are mainly responsible for the national team’s repeated failures. Fortunately, the foreign players are beginning to wake them up!
Re my comment above, I would like to stress that I strongly support Wolves policy of acquiring young home-grown players and developing the Academy. The answer to England’s problems is not mainly in restrictions but in behaviour.
NO. There are is a simple reasons.
Players here learn their trade on large grass pitches. We have cold weather and as a result good quality grass. Players abroad grow up playing alot more ’street’ football and on worse quality pitches. As a result they are more reliant on developing their technical skills to control the ball and play with less space around them. They also spend far more time as youngsters with the ball at their feet.
Thats why Brasil has 5 stars on its shirt and we have one then. I always wondered about that.
About time the PL made a ruling that they can only field 2 foreign players.Then we’ll see how good the likes of Manure, Chelski , L’pool etc do then!!
This guy is not in touch with reality. There are very few English coaches coaching in top leagues overseas- why? England is generally producing run of the mill players who never look like featuring in the world player of the year polls - why?
Oart of the answer is lack of emaphasis on technique with players between 6 and 12 and then the over emphais on competitive football with players when they are still developing. Look at what the Dutch and French do (this is what Australia is doing) with youth football and you will see the way forward. Sorry mate but you are wrong, English is not best and hasn’t beeen for decades and I am English.
In our opinion, the FA, FIFA, UEFA etc are far too busy living the high life funded by money derived from football
Ridiculously expensive paintings deck the halls of the FA (we’re sure the same can be said of the other footballing organisations) and seriously overpaid baffons like Mr S Blatter make such stupid comments about Christiano Ronaldo and comparing an over paid self indulgent young idiot who doesnt realise just how lucky he is to being a slave?
The corridors of football in every country are far too busy lining their own pockets to even care what happens at grass roots - and its disgusting that millions are spent on paintings that no-one apart from the highly paid men and some women who work in these offices will ever even see them!
Like it or not, football is a money making industry, based on people who line their own pockets first!
These organisations should be paving the way for the sport; creating a better future for talent to grow and be developed; BUT they are all far too busy looking after No1 to ever have the time for anything else!
EG: The debarcle at Burton supposed school of excellence is a prime example