as well as ticket prices (obviously right) this is key too
Henry Winter @henrywinter
Premier League TV deal: Windfall must be used to benefit grass-roots and England. Column via @Telegraph
http://fw.to/qp4KSkDhope it happens
I have just read this.
Winter thinks the Premier league should invest in English grassroots football and the future of the England football team.
The Premier League has 6 English owners, 14 non English owners ( Swansea & West Ham being Welsh owned).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_club_ownersI can understand Tighty, as an England fan, wanting that. But if I'm a foreign owner of a Premiership team, I have no interest in that. And Scudamore works for me, so the England decline will continue.
Decline?
These things are exagerrated and though we've had a couple of bad years recently in the Champion's League, we had English finalists every year bar one from 2005 and 2012 and won it 3 times.
There is precious little evidence that it has caused a decline in the National team too.
England rankings since the premier league started
http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/associations/association=eng/men/index.htmlI would also add they are the only team in the European qualifiers with a 100% record. I guess in that group, that doesn't mean so much, but they don't look like a team in decline to me.
I certainly don't believe the English clubs are in terminal decline. I agree it's just a cyclical event. Perhaps there is an argument that the clubs are tactically naive but I think it's a short term thing.
With the money that is about to, and will continue to come, I think English teams will overtake even Real Madrid and Barcelona in the future. Money talks.
But English Premiership teams aren't English and neither to an increasing extent, are their players.
I'm referring to the national team.
~30% of players in the Premier league are English. I see no scenario where that figure will rise.
20 years ago most of the Irish players were playing at Arsenal, Pool, United, Chelsea and strong Premiership teams. As the Premiership grew, the Irish representation in the top teams began to wane and they started playing for weaker and weaker teams.
In our last game we had,
Given (Stoke)
Coleman (Everton) O'Shea (Sunderland) Clark (Villa) Brady (Norwich)
Whelan (Stoke) Hendrick (Derby) McCarthy (Everton) Hoolahan (Norwich)
Walters (Stoke) Keane (LA Galaxy)
No one in the top 4 sides. Or 5. Or 6.
Not all those are guaranteed their game at their clubs. We have the Stoke reserve keeper, a Championship player and a guy earning his pension in America.
The bench was obviously even worse!
As for England winning their group impressively, yes. But even this Ireland team might still qualify. The Euros and World Cup have expanded in the last couple of decades and it's easier to qualify now.
Ireland qualified for the last Euros and we got blown away in every game. It was embarrassing.
Ireland are the small fish in this Premiership eco system and England is the big fish. The bigger fish can still survive but the food chain is getting cut off.
20 years ago, you could have gotten 3 teams of England players from the top 4 teams. Now you couldn't get 1 team.
Young English players increasingly aren't getting the chance at top clubs.
England got 1 point in their group in the World Cup. They can't compete at the highest level anymore.
They've qualified for the Euros but they've no chance of winning it.