The FA delegation that negotiated England’s qualifying schedule for the 2014 World Cup this past week could certainly be described as skilled and strategic based upon the outcome of the 2 hour meeting in Warsaw to decide the Group H fixture list. But superstitious? Certainly not. The team representing England’s interests, led by Club England managing director Adrian Bevington, undoubtedly succeeded in crafting a schedule that gives the Three Lions an excellent shot at booking an early ticket to Brazil. No games at all in June - when England’s players would likely be at their lowest physical ebb following an exhausting domestic season - and three of their first five qualifiers against the two lowest ranked countries in the group, San Marino (home and away) and Moldova (away). But England’s final Group H encounter? The match that we all hope will be a “dead rubber” by that time but that, nevertheless, may quite possibly end up being 90 minutes that define yet another footballing future for our country? Poland. In October. At Wembley. Those of us old enough to remember the stomach-churning agony of that night 38 years ago will naturally be captive to stirrings of unease should our national side once again be tasked to make it count as the qualifier clock strikes twelve. But Poland? That would be just be too much of a doppelganger moment. My dad and brother howling tormentedly at the living room TV as England squandered chance after chance after chance. Me doing my homework at the dining table, trying to divide my attention between differential equations and the hapless attempts of Channon, Chivers and Clarke to pierce the Polish rearguard. Finally giving up the ghost as the game entered injury time to join Dad and John by the TV, both on their feet now as the final minute of England’s qualification campaign for the 1974 World Cup ebbed away. A corner to England. “Come ON!” Dad shouts. “This time England!” belts John. Then in just seconds the story that becomes England’s future begins to be penned. The corner well struck to a melee of red and white at the edge of the six yard box. A cluster of heads, a ball directed down and goalwards. A Polish knee on the line directs the ball not out but sideways across the open goal towards the back post. More red and white. Kevin Hector’s boot. Then the ball limping along the side netting. Done. Dusted.

But of course that’s history. What’s important is designing the schedule that will maximize England’s chances of success. It’s all software and algorithms these days anyway. Nothing to do with superstition. Just input all the factors into the program and wait for it to spit out the answer. It’s facts not fate.

But Poland? In October?

Above: Kevin Hector (out of picture) scored a lot of goals but somewhat sadly for the erstwhile prolific striker none are remembered as much as this miss

In Leave international friendlies alone – but give this wretched Europa League the boot Sam Wallace of the Independent makes the point that the number of games the England football team plays every season has not changed much over the years. This despite the protestations of those such as ECA chairman and Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge that there are too many international matches on the football calendar. Wallace says further that it is actually club fixtures that have expanded to fill every last godforsaken space in the fixture calendar.

After reading Wallace’s article I decided to conduct my own analysis of England matches played each season between 1965-66 (the season concluding with England’s World Cup win) to last season 2010-11. Using as a source the excellent football statistics site myfootballfacts.com my analysis resulted in the following findings:

For ALL 46 football seasons between 1965/66 and 2010/11 England played on average 11.0 full international matches between August and July, where ‘full international matches’ include all senior team competitive games (qualifiers and tournament finals) and international friendlies. England development team matches (U21, U20, etc.) and ‘B’ internationals are not included.

Breaking the data down further we see that for the 16 seasons since 1965/66 that concluded with England competing in the finals of either a World Cup or European Championship the average number of games played by the national side increased to 13.4 per season.

By contrast, for the 30 seasons since 1965/66 where England did not figure in either World Cup or European Championship finals (either through it being an off-tournament season or by failing to qualify) the average number of full international matches played fell to 9.7 per season.

Perhaps not surprisingly the most ever matches the Three Lions have played in a season was 1965/66 when they went all the way to the World Cup Final. The epic encounter against West Germany on July 30 1966 was England’s 18th match since the Home International tie against Wales the previous October. The lowest number? Two seasons tie for that honour - the post World Cup win season of 1966/67 and Graham Taylor’s ill-fated 1993/94 campaign that ended in failure to qualify for USA 94. England played only six full internationals in each of those seasons.

Now what about the biggie question - are England playing more matches today than they used to? This is the oft-voiced complaint from those who argue that the football calendar is being clogged by meaningless international friendlies. Well, let’s look at the last ten years and see how they compare relative to the overall average numbers of the last 46 seasons.  The table below shows the numbers of full internationals that England have played since season 2001/02.

The last row of the data above shows that over the ten seasons since 2001/02 the number of full internationals played by the England side has varied from a high of 1.6 matches above the 46-year average (in 2001/02, the season ending with the 2002 South Korea/Japan World Cup) to a low of 0.7 matches below the 46-year average (seasons 2002/03 and last season 2010/11). The average difference of the ten years is +0.5 or, simply stated, over the last ten years the England side has played about half a match more than the average for all seasons between 1965/66 and 2010/11. If you were looking for a trend at the end of the 2008/09 season you might have argued that England were indeed playing about a game more per season based on the last 3 years (which after all is about 10% in a 10-11 game season), but then to confound it all that was followed by seasons 2009/10 and 2010/11 where the Three Lions played 0.4 and 0.7 games less than average respectively.

What this all really says is that - certainly within a match or so and allowing for expected fluctuations between competitive tournament and off-tournament years - the England national side has been playing about the same number of games very season since Bobby Moore lifted the Jules Rimet trophy that sunny Saturday afternoon in 1966. 

So when people point to clogged football calendars and knackered players it clearly is NOT international football that’s the culprit. The blame for this situation lies fairly and squarely with the ever escalating number of games that must now be played by English players in European competition with the introduction of the European Champions League and now the Europa League. It’s all money, of course, let’s not be naive. I understand that. The owners and boards of today’s top clubs in England the rest of Europe would happily dispense with international football in its entirety if they had their way since it would mean that their resources of production - the players - could be focused 100% on the creation of professional game revenue.

Are English footballers playing too many games today? Possibly. Even on this point though I would point to the number of games that many of England’s 1966 winners played in their Jules Rimet-winning season (the final against West Germany was Bobby Moore’s 72nd game of the 1965-66 season) and it didn’t seem to impact their performance did it? But even if they are let’s not fool ourselves and blame it on too many international matches. England are playing no more on average today than they did 50 years ago. It’s digging for gold in the professional game that’s pushing Wilshere into the red zone and setting off Gerrard’s dodgy groin, not turning out ten times a year for the Three Lions. 

Let’s at least call it like it is. If we want to sell our patriotism for the mighty Euro let’s stand up and admit it like the real men who fought for England and St. Richard. Not nag like little spoiled little babies about having to get behind the country of our birth again in meaningless fashion. If that’s what being English means to you then, well, as the Kinks once sang perhaps there really is no England anymore.

Gary Neville writes in his autobiography Red that in retrospect he considers his England career a ‘waste of time’. He also goes on to state that ‘winning for my club was always the most important thing’. Quite a contrast to the days when Gary, asked when he might follow his Manchester United team mate Paul Scholes into international retirement, replied “that’s not for me to decide”.

Although I would never presume to doubt this is how Gary feels I do wonder if his words are at least partly born of a certain frustration that the broken England set-up of the time was clearly never going to deliver him that one euphoric career moment that would most certainly have made his time as an England player worthwhile.

Just imagine if the over-commercialism of the game had never happened in the early 1990s and the financial objectives of the EPL had not crushed the breath out of English player development. The promise of Italia 90 might have blossomed into silverware before decades end instead of dying on the vine as the FA’s misguided attempt to leash the insubordinate Football League birthed the monster that swallowed our national game whole. A 21-year old Gary Neville might have been jigging on the Wembley turf in the summer of 96 as our nerveless lions efficiently and mercilessly overcame their inferior German opponents. And then just two years later he might have been delirious with joy as England confirmed their global superiority in Paris with a comfortable win over the hosts in France98. 

Oh but for the howlers of others is England’s finest ever right-back resigned to the perception that his international outings were no more worthwhile than a day at the seaside. Well Gary, from this England fan’s point of view, I will always think differently if that’s OK. The days when you wore the Three Lions on your shirt were never a waste of time for me. 

The world cup is over for the England U20 squad following their 1-0 defeat at the hands of Nigeria in the Round of 16 tie in Armenia, Colombia. The odds were always stacked against this hugely inexperienced group of players with over 30 pre-tournament pull-outs from Premier League clubs decimating the plans of Head Coach Brian Eastick. The reasons behind the pull-outs, or rather I should say the ability of EPL outfits to execute the pull-outs, will need to be an action item on the agenda of the game’s governing bodies over the next few months as they react to the recommendations of the Select Committee’s Inquiry into Football Governance. For now though let’s just congratulate the Young Lions as they get ready to return home. For them the experience was a million times more valuable than keeping the bench warm for first-team regulars during pre-season games against nothing opposition. And to the clubs who pulled players? Well, you lost the chance this summer to get back a youngster who would have been twice the player he was before he left. But then you don’t deserve it anyway.

Above: “Work with me! Work with me!” England U20 Head Coach was not just working with both hands tied behind his back at the U20 World Cup in Colombia but was hog-tied by Premier League clubs who pulled over 30 players before the tournament even kicked off 

It’s Almost There! The Select Committee Report on Football Governance is published on Friday morning!

By the time I wake up Friday morning in California many of you will already have been picking the bones of the Select Committee Report on Football Governance for several hours. Before hitting the hay tonight over here I thought I’d relay some of my hopes for the report on an inquiry that has promised to get at the very heart of the problems that have bedeviled the English game for decades now.

I thought the easiest way to communicate what for me would be the ideal outcome would be to revisit the six questions that the inquiry posed back in January this year and state the position that I hope the Select Committee takes on each one:

Question 1 - Should football clubs in the UK be treated differently from other commercial organisations?

Overwhelmingly YES. One of the fundamental root causes of so many of the problems that beset English football is that clubs are run like corporations and not the community-focused institutions that they have been, are and should remain. It makes me sick to hear comments like the one made by a director at a top English club that ‘financially there is a lot of unfulfilled potential in football as it stands.’  

Question 2 - Are football governance rules in England and Wales, and the governing bodies which set and apply them, fit for purpose?

Err, duhhhh…NO. Anyone who’s managed to find a scrap of evidence suggesting that the FA, Premier League and Football League are organizations working together in perfect harmony for the good of the English game is living in an alternative universe.

Question 3 - Is there too much debt in the game?

Not all debt is bad debt. For example, a mortgage is not bad debt if you can afford to pay the principal and interest when all your other expenses have been paid. If you can’t so this however your debt is certainly bad since you’re in a never ending spiral of increasing indebtedness while you can’t make the payments. For a business - or a football club - bad debt is debt that cannot be covered by the profits made from day to day operations.  The Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance 2010 shows that neither Premier League or Football League clubs in total can cover their combined interest liability with combined operating profits. So the total debt of both the Premier League and the Football League is most certainly bad debt.

Question 4 - What are the pros and cons of the Supporter Trust share-holding model?

The primary drawback to the Supporters’ Trust model is the difficulty and the cost involved in securing an adequate number of shares to achieve meaningful influence over the decisions of the board, particularly for the larger clubs. Even with the help of money from the UK government’s Supporter Direct initiative it requires a ludicrously large amount of cash to buy a seat on the board of a Premier League club. It is obviously easier with smaller Football League clubs but then the issue here is that the Trusts in these cases are often taking over after the previous owners have driven the club into the ground. I personally prefer the Community Interest Company structure, a governance model that could achieve the same goals as the Supporters’ Trust model but without the Trust’s limitations.

Question 5 - Is government intervention justified and if so what form should it take?

Personally, I think yes. I have a feeling that the Select Committee report will have quite a few hard hitting recommendations around changes to governance structures and reducing the influence of the Premier League that will not be implemented voluntarily. I would set a time limit of perhaps 6-9 months to achieve certain milestone and then take the crowbar to a few knees.

Question 6 - Are there lessons to be learned from football governance models across the UK and abroad, and from governance models in other sports?

Absolutely. Germany is a great example, and so is Holland. In both of these countries (and most of Fifa’s 128 member countries) the national game (i.e. the national side as well as grass roots football and community-focused aspects of the game) are managed as a higher priority than the professional leagues. This is the way it should be, but we’ve lost sight of this ever since Division One became the Premier League. And I won’t accept that “we can’t follow Germany or anyone else because their current set-up evolved in a different way”. That’s just giving up before we’ve started.

So those are all the correct answers. I’ll be grading the Select Committee’s answers in the morning and I really hope they get them all right. Come on boys, I know you can do it!