Pride of smaller clubs' fans ignored by Greg Dyke's England masterplan
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Version 0 of 1. Given the bitter enmities and petty turf wars that dominate English football, it is quite a feat to unite the warring tribes. But Greg Dyke, the pugnacious Football Association chairman who came into the job vowing to make his mark in a short space of time, appears to have done just that with his plan to introduce B teams into the Football League – albeit in not quite the way he may have anticipated. Everyone agrees what the problem is: the lack of young English players appearing in the top flight is reaching critical levels and one of the major reasons is the blockage of opportunity for those aged 18 to 21. It is, as one contributor to the report put it, the "Bermuda triangle" of English football. The mistake is to assume we can simply import a solution. For too long the English game merely cast its eyes longingly in the direction of whichever country's youth system was sweeping all before it – whether that was France, Germany or Spain – without being prepared to will the means. Here, too, the belief that a huge intervention in our unique football pyramid will magically work because it has in Spain and elsewhere is erroneous. It also fundamentally misunderstands the mindset of the football supporter. Danny Mills, the opinionated former England defender who sat on the England Commission, blithely insisted that fans of Hartlepool would far rather see their club play Manchester United B than Torquay United. There is a pride that runs through fans in the Football League and the Conference that suggests that is not necessarily the case. In October Dyke stood on the site where the rules of Association Football were codified and said the FA recognised the "fantastic tradition of the 72 Football League clubs". Now he is asking them to cash in that tradition for payments of £2m a year from the Premier League clubs who want to introduce B teams into the Football League. The other irony of the latest outburst of feuding among English football's dysfunctional family is that it comes at a time when, beneath the alarming statistics at the top level, there are signs of progress beneath. The Premier League, for the first time in two decades, is acknowledging its wider debt to football beyond its gilded walls and at least talking a good game when it comes to developing more homegrown talent. Its argument – that we had already gone around the houses on this debate and come up with the elite player performance plan as a result – had some merit. In some ways, Dyke couldn't win. Because the FA ceded power to the clubs more than 20 years ago, he needs their support to change – and knows he must at least try to change a mindset that values instant success over long-term planning. That means cutting deals. But it also means playing the politics and, like so many of his predecessors, Dyke may suffer for not being sufficiently cute in taking on the professional game. The report produced by his commission is thorough, well-researched and provokes debate. Yet among the 650-plus interviews they didn't find time to talk to those most affected. The shame is that all of the good stuff is likely to be obscured by the League Three farrago. The debate also smacks of putting the cart before the horse. Part two of the commission's work – which will focus on the desperate state of grassroots facilities and the shameful underinvestment in coaching – would have been more likely to create a consensus. As it is, the implementation of the commission's conclusions threatens to be just as controversial and divisive as its formation. |