Why It's Time for England's FA Bosses to Read

Punditry and excuses aside, Germany completed a devastating demolition job on the English soccer team sometime yesterday. As usual, this is a traditional and emotion-laden rivalry for which newspapers and fans from both nations have gone overdrive with explanations for why one side lost and the other lost  won. Unfortunately, most of the purported explanations from the pundits and sports journalists tell make no revelations for anyone with even the simplest and objective view of the facts.

Among the explanations are a summary posited by Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics Blog and another on the Daily Telegraph site here. And to my mind, it is understandable that English angst against foreign players is now on show on account of the fact that a number of Premier League clubs are predominantly served by non-English players.

While I do not expect that the loose punditry will lead to a firm solution, I think that many of the ideas posited are at best guesses and at worst diversions. In an earlier blog post here, i was completely skeptical that England was capable of winning the World Cup 2010. And my views were not formed out of strong conviction as much as having read through this book. It states as clearly as can be stated about England's performance in international soccer and what changes the football association would have to make to deepen the ranks from which players are recruited in addition to the scope for England's improvements. Without being a spoiler spoiling, the protectionist backlash against foreign players is not part of the solution.

I would recommend that the Football Association buy a copy for each manager, the players but that the Chairman and the board should read through it in whole. Or perhaps hire someone to present pithy summaries of its main messages to them. the tone of recriminations that i hear are proof that England will blame foreigners, the managers (especially the foreign ones) and cry for more chances for local lads. The authors, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski show with data that this is unlikely to work.