posted Jan 8, 2008

Evening all, I just wanted to say thanks to all who participated in the debate - lively stuff and plenty of solid points. I also wanted to post a few final thoughts in response to some of the issues raised.

The first is that while I can see where many of you are coming from with the "Blatter would say that, international football is his meal ticket and international football is dead because the club game is so much better" argument....I just don't buy it. Not all of it, anyway. I'll give you the first bit but the second part is a close relative of the "Premier League is the best league in the world, FACT!" fact - oft-repeated and fervently believed by many but just lacking any genuine, measurable evidence.

For me (and the TV viewing figures/our internet stats would bear this out) nothing can compare with a big international game. As Jimmy Armfield put it this weekend, the national team matters from Cornwall to Carlisle. They are good, old-fashioned, nation-sits-down-to-watch-something-together moments. They are the only games my fiancee wants to watch with me and they are the only games my mum will know the result of. I know it has become fashionable, particularly among fans of the bigger clubs, to view international football as a second-rate side show that tires out your stars for the serious business of the league/Europe. But that is not how the majority of football fans view the national team. And I think if those "club first" fans were honest they would admit they did get at least a little bit excited before England's last three quarter-finals, not to mention the Munich miracle, the England-Greece qualifier, the Italy-England qualifier, England-Argentina in 98 and 02 and all of Euro 96...don't even get me started on Italia 90 or the last 15 minutes of England-Argentina 86!

The second point I'd like to make is that I also don't buy this whole "let's forget international football, it's out-dated, parochial, thuggish etc and we're all global citizens now". Yes, hooliganism and shirt-off-drink-all-day-in-the-main-square-singing-songs-about-not-surrendering-to-the-IRA yobbishness is very 1970s and annoying, but if you look beyond the idiots you will find thousands of English fans generally being decent. The atmosphere in and around the games in Germany two summers ago was superb, as it was in Portugal two years before. I went as a fan and had a whale of a time with like-minded people from Germany, Poland, Australia, Spain, USA, Ghana etc etc. Nothing remotely boorish about any of it. I also think the argument that nationalism is no longer important is also very very flimsy. A quick glance through the serious parts of the newspaper will soon tell you otherwise. The beauty of sport is that competition between nations on the playing field is so much better than other more harmful forms of competition. The old, more serious, rivalries still provide a bit of edge to a sporting contest, but that's all, and even that fades with time.

I could also point out the club sides and their supporters can also get embroiled in some fairly ugly spats with rivals both local and far away.

And as a final, final thought, I'd just like to say that Sepp Blatter is many things but I don't think he's anti-English. In fact, like many continental chaps of his generation, I think he has rather a warmer view of us than we do of ourselves. I agree, he doesn't think much of the Premier League's influence, but that's not anti-Englishness, that's politics. The PL is the leading force in the club-not-country brigade, a stance Sepp isn't going to like, is he?

I found it quite sweet that this Swiss bloke actually thought England still belonged in the top bracket of nations that were "too good" to consider going elsewhere for a manager. The poor man, he's clearly a hopeless Anglophile.

Thanks for reading

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posted Jan 9, 2008

Hi cantonabeachsoccer, I'm not sure I understand all your points but I'll have a go at answering them as best I can.

My comment re: Blatter and the "he would say that, wouldn't he" argument that some people have proposed in this debate, is that they are, of course, partially right. As the head of international football's governing body, he clearly has an interest in international football's continuing good health. Therefore, any comments he makes about the club v country debate must be viewed as coming from somebody with an obvious interest, or bias, in that debate. It doesn't mean you should immediately ignore anything he says - you can be biased and right - it just means you need to be cautious.

What I was trying to say that having taken care to remember Blatter's interest/bias here, I still think he has a decent point to make here about what international football should be about. I think included a quote from Graham Taylor in an earlier reply that said something along the lines of international football being about the best of our lot - players and coaches - versus the best of the other lot. He too admitted to having mixed feelings about Capello's appointment. He has genuine admiration for Capello's record and admits he was probably the FA's only real option, but it doesn't sit well with him...or me, for that matter. I think we have followed the letter of the law in appointing another foreign manager but not the spirit of the law.

I'm less clear on your points about nationalism. I certainly do not think that we should refuse to "tolerate" a foreign manager! We have already had one foreign England manager and ultimately he was deemed to be a failure (although we are very quickly reappraising that now!) not because he wasn't English, but because he didn't deliver. There are prominent overseas leaders in all walks of British life and they are all judged in the same way. The British people have always been a fairly accommodating bunch (not perfect, but better than most, in my opinion) as waves of assimilated immigrants over the centuries would attest. I just think the national team of your national team should (whenever possible) be coached/managed/led by somebody of your nationality. That, I believe, is Blatter's "principle". And it is one that he believes is shared by all the major football nations...which, rightly or wrongly, he believes England to be among.

And the "nationalism" I was referring to was of the very gentlest and purely sporting variety...although we are only kidding ourselves if we don't admit that more traditional nationalism provides the backdrop (hopefully, now a long way in the background) for most sporting rivalries (I say most, because our new rivalry with Portugal has come about from a couple of very tight games against them...it's more like a non-derby club rivalry...it's become personal between the players themselves...Portugal the country is the UK's longest continuous ally!). I was simply trying to point that those who think the club game has superceded international competition because it is some how above nasty old "nationalism" are, well, naively idealistic at best, deluded at worst.

The Almunia situation is slightly different and still hypothetical. But to answer your question in the simplest way possible, no, I don't think it's a good thing for overseas players - deemed not good enough to play for their own countries - to switch their allegiances simply because they have met some arbitrary residential qualification as a result of working in this country. I don't agree with it for Almunia and I don't agree with it for anybody else. I also don't agree with it for cricket, rugby or any other sport.

Where it gets more complicated is in cases like Owen Hargreaves's - a player with family connections to a country other than the one of his birth/upbringing, who has been quite clear from the outset in wanting to play for that country. I appreciate that this is not a black and white issue and that there are many shades of grey in the middle. But I would like to think that people can draw a distinction between the different cases of Almunia and Hargreaves.

Cheers

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