Premier league's responsibility to England

England FA head honcho Brian Barwick (http://tinyurl.com/3cb637) says in an interview with the BBC (http://tinyurl.com/yve6j4) that 'The Premier League ... has a responsibility to deliver some good players to the FA'.

What responsibility?

Was it the Premier League who hired an incompetent for the last euro-qualifying campaign? Are they responsible for the state of English football players at grass-roots level or youth level? Sure some PL teams have academies, but those teams are largely going the same way as the first teams, with increasingly more foreign influence in the sides.

What would the PL gain from pushing for more English talent? Would it gain from increased viewing figures after the England team win the world cup? Or would it lose them from forcing teams to play average English players instead of pretty boy foreign-types with quick feet, lots of tricks and greasey hair, in the hope these English players improved?

Who benefits from forcing Rooney to play with someone like Marcus Bent at club level instead of Ronaldo? Not Rooney, not the PL and not England.

Any aid that the PL gives to England's cause is IMO mostly altruistic. It is for the FA to sort out FFS some decent youth academies around the country for ENGLISH players, and to try and figure out how exactly to produce a top level English manager.

You are right that Barwick should be looking closer to home if he is going to habd out blame. He knows that he should have fallen on his sword and it is beyond my belief that the press in England didn´t hound him out.

However, the big clubs (especially the big four) could help by not poaching the young talent from lower clubs and then not playing them. The carpet bombing approach of scouting for all promising 14-15 year olds and waving promises of money and fame at their families is detrimental to the game IMHO. I understand the strategy. Chelsea et al want to make sure they have the next Rooney on their books.

I just feel more youngsters don´t go on to make it through this approach. At lower clubs they are bigger fish and get a chance to develop and play first team football. Of course the set up at the top is better, but not much use if ultimately the player doesn´t get a chance because the manager opts for a foreign signing. I also feel that offering such promises to youngsters turns their heads. Once at the big club, they feel they have made it and start acting accordingly. Then their game suffers.

Look at Chelsea when the Russian came in. They started throwing money at every youngster that seemed to be getting good reviews in the papers. Most of them ended up rotting in their reserves.

Agents don´t help. If the FA wanted to help, they should make it illegal for agents to be involved at all with kids on schoolboy or even YTS papers. I understand one of Chelsea´s (for example) tricks is to hire their fathers as scouts.

If you are going to buy foreign players for millions great. If you are going to share 95% of the Sky money amongst yourselves so be it. But let us develop and play the youngsters and when they become too big for our little ponds allow a bit of Murdochs millions trickle down through the system.

Then more home-grown quality may be playing in the top flight.

Originally posted by Hopster
The carpet bombing approach of scouting for all promising 14-15 year olds and waving promises of money and fame at their families is detrimental to the game IMHO.

Well, not totally wrong.

That gives Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs access to all the youngsters in acadamies in London teams and Man Utd and Liverpool access to acadamiesin the North West.

So if a big club tap up a youngster and the youngster just choses not to sign pro papers with their existing club, what exactly are the FA going to do? Maybe they will fine them 40,000 pounds. Then Chelsea will just go to the European court under the Bosman ruling.

You may know about how to run a chess site, but I believe you are being a little naive here.