yes buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...
how many foreign managers have been in charge of clubs in the last 10-15 years? well, a rough estimate by me would be sodding loads. including, er benitez and martinez, there'll be more foreign input in the english football league system than anywhere else in the world, and yet none of these managers has developed decent young english players? to add to that, it's common practice for the big clubs to splash the cash on 17 and 18 year old youngsters, yet they don't all seem to be falling apart, so I'm unsure to the reasoning behind martinez's comments. at 18-21 foreign players are developing fine in england, why aren't the english ones.
in fact the only one that managed it was a scot brought up in roughly the same environment, and even he lost the knack for bringing them through after a while.
tbh, one of the problems is all the mucking about looking for some complex answer, we've had theory after theory devoted to this and some of them don't hold water after a little examination.
As been said before by a few on this site whenever the inevitable analysis of that state of the national game and league happens is that ENG were lagging behind the rest of Europe in having a national academy like La masia, zeist, clairfontaine and one in italy (can't remember the name right now)
This is one reasons why ENG have no notable "style" in their play unlike a spain, germany, france, italy because ENG never had that national hub where coaches from all levels could understand the "English way".
Plus i've always said that this so called "Golden Generation" of Gerrard, Rooney, Beckham, Scholes, Lampard, Owen, Ferdinand, Cole etc etc etc suffer from "FOF" - Fear of Failure.
You look at many England games since world cup 98 & you see a similar way these generation of players fold under pressure for ENG instead of stepping up as they do in their clubs in similar situations.
This generation of players was way better than EURO 96 team in overall talent & depth than the EURO 96 team or Italia 90 team - but for aforementioned reasons they don't know how to win.
Whether ENG get to Brazil or not, the last remnants of that era needs to be faded out before we see some improvements in results along with St.George's park developing.
Because if i look at some of the young talent even among the 35% of premier league players an envision of potentially 2018 world cup starting XI - it wont be a team lacking talent:
Hart
Walker Jones Smalling Rose
Barkely Wilshire
Walcott Rooney Welbeck
Sturrigde
Richards, Caulkner, Jenkinson, Wisdom, Gibbs, Shaw, Cleverley, Shelvey, Rodwell, T Caroll, Chalobah, Sterling, Alex Ox, Townsend, Bertrand, A Carroll
damn if i was a betting man, you would have made me a rich man today. Could have predicted with absolutely certainly that would have been your response to Walcott's injury.
