Dyke's cliche

Greg Dyke, over the moon,sick as a parrot, or unable to hit a cow's arse?

Really, here's the facts, the actual, hard to swallow, factual facts:

Question: How many successes has the England international football team recorded?

Answer: One. 1966 World Cup. Held here. Home advantage.

That's a lot of years with nothing to show. Years when there's been foreign players all over the place, years when there's been hardly any at all.

I think Dyke is a political animal. This is based on his willingness to go with what will be popular rather than with what some more informed research would suggest. It is based on his ineffectiveness in his role and his lack of a depth of knowledge or experience in the field he's taken charge of. Perhaps that's unfair and his attitude is just misguided and badly thought-through.

In any case, he's spouting popular footballing clichés:

“It'd be sad to see City win the league (he a lifelong United fan, by the way) with only two regular English players.”

He's also going on about the system being clogged up with imported players stopping our homegrown lads coming through. This argument, popular though it is, clearly sounds like footballs equivalent of the Daily Mail / UKIP attitude to immigrants.

The fact is this: international football success does not depend on opening floodgates, and allowing mediocre players to flourish. International tournaments are won by squads of truly elite players, lucky enough to have one, maybe two truly worldclass players (as in they'd walk into any team in the world), and that player, or one of those two,must be in the form of his life, absolutely on fire.

Add to that the sort of immensely detailed management structure ensuring that they're given every chance of doing the very best they can, an inspired and tactically savvy coach, a large dollop of good luck and some momentum going into the later stages of the tournament, and you're in with a chance.

Having no end of fair, middling, decent-enough fringe players gets you nowhere. Your squad consists of twenty-odd players. How many fringe players do you need at any one time?

Dyke claims the percentage of English players in the permiership teams each week is an indicator of the success the international team may or may not enjoy. Perhaps those numbers are actually inversely related, and the better English players have to be to stand a chance of a regular game for their clubs, the more they'll shine and be equipped to really compete when the time comes.

English cricket has operated a two imported player limit for seasons now. During those seasons, the national team has struggled, has been the number one test playing country in the world, and struggled again. The two player limit has remained consistent throughout those ups and downs.

Dyke's BBC wasn't exactly groundbreaking or innovative, and it looks like his FA's going to be equally feeble, a vanilla football body. Shame, because he does seem a genuine football bloke (if you can forgive (and I struggle with this) the Man Utd thing) after the Crozier debacle, and he could've represented some fresh air, instead, it seems, we're going to be subjected to more of the same old downhome drinking men's club approach, when, to move football forwards, a more radical leadership is required.