Gareth Southgate on England's future
Football changed and left England behind - now the country is fighting back.
Picture the scene - Fabio Capello's national side is crumbling. A 32-year-old Frank Lampard is outshone by Arsenal starlet Jack Wilshere in Saturday's lacklustre 2-2 draw with Switzerland.
Against the Swiss it was the senior players who let the side down, the last of the 'golden generation' struggling to convince others they are more than fool's gold.
The failures of the last decade – now standing at three World Cups and one European Championship, not forgetting the inability to qualify for Euro 2008 – serve as reminders of the deficiencies.
English football needs life. The complacency and stubbornness which have dogged the game in this country because of its history have become the biggest noose.
England might have invented the game but they've lost the patent.
Yet even though Germany and Spain have dashed ahead in terms of youth development – something recognised by Football Association – they are not out of sight.
At Walsall's Banks's Stadium last night, coaches from across the West Midlands quizzed FA youth chiefs Sir Trevor Brooking and Gareth Southgate about proposed changes to the grassroots game.
The FA's Youth Development Review is a planned overhaul of grassroots football which, it is hoped, will revolutionise the game.
The focus is on improving the enjoyment and technique for kids and head of elite development Southgate insisted the plans are vital to the future.
The former Villa and England defender said: "There are no guarantees we will win something because of this but I'm pretty certain, if we don't do it, we won't win anything.
"Historically we've had a certain style and beliefs. When I played international football there were so many occasions where the other teams were technically better than we were.
"We've always produced a few technically good players – Gascoigne, Scholes, Rooney – but if we had injuries our talent pool wasn't large enough.
"People are rightly raising the question now, why aren't we technically playing the same way as the Spanish, Portuguese or Italians? I think there's a generation of fathers saying this is what they want for their kids.
"We have great character and resilience, which are strengths other countries don't have, so we don't want to just be modelling ourselves on the Spanish but we need to change.
"Twelve years ago we would have modelled ourselves on the French and three years ago on the Germans, but it's not about picking one thing or one country.
"It's about what's right for us. The principles don't change, you have to have a well rounded player and making decisions on the pitch doesn't change, but how we get there is different for us than it is for the Spanish."
The under-21s start their Euro 2011 campaign against Spain in Denmark on Sunday with all eyes on Stuart Pearce's kids.
Henri Lansbury, Daniel Sturridge and Marc Albrighton are the young pretenders to England's tired old guard but may fall to the weight of expectation and limitations which hampered their predecessors.
It's not an overnight fix and Brooking, the FA's director of football development, admitted England are still years behind their international rivals.
He said: "Germany were doing it 10 years ago and had similar investment so this is a five or 10- year plan.
"It's a long-term thing. We're working with the Premier League and they are happy to buy into the changes. If we're helped by the Premier League we could transform it in five or 10 years.
"It's an exciting time. It's taken a while to get here but I think the momentum is there. It's time for a change if we want to get to a competitive level in international football.
"Arsene Wenger said, with the English youngster's desire, hunger and physical energy, if you could get the technical level the same as the better Europeans, he'd pick the English youngster every time. But the gap is too big.
"What we've got to do is get our English youngsters much better technically and give the clubs a difficult option. At the moment it's too easy to go abroad and bring in half a dozen youngsters."
The Development Review is the biggest facelift grassroots football has undergone since 11-a-side for under-10s was banned a decade ago.
The roadshow is on a 16-city tour to raise awareness and assess the responses from coaches and players.
But the changes – which if rubber-stamped will be mandatory by 2013-14 – will take time to make that crucial difference.
The proposals include scrapping league tables for children below secondary-school age and a change in the date which determines which age-group children play in.
There will also be more focus on nine vs nine – less players means more touches and more touches means increased technique.
The FA want to delay kids playing 11 vs 11 until under-13s, which is still a year younger than in Spain. National development manager Nick Levett had planned the revamp before failure in last year's World Cup turned the spotlight on his work.
And, while it wasn't the catalyst, South Africa was the best thing to happen to grassroots football as the failure screamed the need for change.
Levett said: "There seems to be a movement for change.
"I'd been doing all the research about eight months before the World Cup and no-one knew what I was doing but then we had a poor tournament.
"It put the spotlight on youth development and the Champions League final last month between Barcelona and Manchester United also highlighted some of the deficiencies.
"We're starting to knock on an open door now whereas, previously, everyone was saying there's nothing wrong with the game."
By Nick Mashiter