Just who should be held responsible?

I think where English football falls down at international level is the FACT that almost all prospective and current England players are all insulated having only played their club football in this country with it's perculiar manner of playing the game.

Look at all the small countries who have done well in the World Cup and you will see how most of their players play their football away from their home environment. Look at Brazil, look at Argentina. Germany, Spain and Italy bare comparison with England when it comes to the percentage of their players who play domestic football, but then their domestic football has more in common with enlightened World Cup levels than our domestic high pressure environment..

Valuable experience of living and training away from home comforts and the tactical awareness and flexibility gained thereof is one helluva strong weapon to have in one's armoury and the lack of it sticks out like a sore thumb in the England squad in my opinion.

The basic fact after all this debate is that the English team wasn't good enough. Yesterday Michel Platini went on record to state that the three countries in Europe that invest the most in developing youth have all reached the World Cup semi finals. In England we spent £750 million on Wembley stadium which would have been better spent on the Burton football centre. After losing to England in the Euro 2000 tournament the German FA went back to basics and invested a similar amount of money as we spent on Wembley developing youth players and built at least three football centres. They have over 20,000 registered youth coaches whereas we have about 1,000. The results of their work are there to see in the German team that demolished our 'golden generation'. Until the FA wake up and take action to change the way football is run, coached ,etc then we will always fall short of success. Two years ago we were promised a 'root and branch' review of football following our elimination from Euro 2008 - I have yet to hear anything further on this which I feel says it all.

Just a bit further up the road in North London is a another young Mexican called Giovani Dos Santos who was signed by Spurs from Barcelona by Juande Ramos. He was first at Barcelona B, then Barcelona's first team before making the switch to Tottenham making 7 appearances before being loaned out first to Ipswich Town and then last season to Galatasary.

While I was driving back from work today Radio 5 were doing an interview with Tony Woodcock who had 2 spells at 1 FC Koln and a couple seasons at Fortuna Koln. He was saying that he thought that the big difference between German and English clubs is a financial one. Whereas English clubs can go out and spend money quicker than a Russian Oligarch on players, German clubs are choosing to develop their own players. That's not to say that German clubs are poor and never spend money on huge transfer fees but even the richest club in Germany, Bayern Munich, who've spent big amounts on Frank Ribery, Arjan Robben and that cheating lazy carthorse Luca Toni have also developed Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Mueller and the two full backs Philipp Lahm and Holger Badstuber. Philipp Lahm, now 26 has been at Bayern since he was 11 years old and played two seasons at Bayern Munich II (the reserve team squad) before being loaned to fellow talent developers VFB Stuttgart where he made 53 appearances in two seasons for the Swabian club who were then managed by Felix Magath.

It's also worth noting that there are several real football men involved in the upper echelons of Bayern Munich. German companies' board of directors (called the Vorstand) usually employ people who've had first hand experience of the shop floor and have worked there way up the company structure. Ex player Karl Heinz Rummenigge is the CEO and Uli Hoeness is the president. Also as Audi and Adidas both own 9% of Bayern Munich AG, Hebert Hainer (CEO of Adidas) and Rupert Stadler (Chairman of Audi) are both on the Supervisory board of directors, called the Aufsichtsrat. Others include a prominent Journalist (Helmut Markwort), a prominent politician called Edmund Stoiber, who seems to be the loose cannon as he's known in Germany for being very Pro Vladimir Putin as well as being anti-Turkish, anti-Islam and anti-Asylum seeker. But then again most Bavarians are! The other VIP on the board of directors is Martin Winterkorn who's Chairman of Volkswagen AG (who also own VFL Wolfsburg 100%) which also means it's subsidaries Audi and Porsche. Bayern are also the 4th richest club in the world. In 2009 they generated 303 million euros in Revenue but only 2.5 million Euros were profit. Part of the reason for selling 9% to Audi for 90 million Euros was to ease the repayments on the Allianz Arena.

Interestingly enough only one club in Germany is a PLC and listed on the German Stock Exchange and that is Borussia Dortmund. They had huge initial success and then they've been in decline ever since. They had to sell their Westfalenstadion which they now lease in a move which mirrors some of the shadier deals in our Football League (Cambridge, Wrexham etc).

Borussia Dortmund excepted most German clubs seem to be very stable, efficiently organised and not prone to the free for all greed of the Premier League.

Funnily enough the only big club I can think of in the Premier League who a) aren't cash rich and b) seem to have a realistic expection of what they can achieve are Everton. They've kept faith with David Moyes and they are producing young English players. Their success in developing Wayne Rooney and Jack Rodwell is in stark contrast how little local talent Liverpool are producing these days. But I guess after they fluked that "night in Istanbul" the expectation was that they could rule England once more. Oh dear.

So that's it in a nutshell. Curb the greed and reward in the Premier League and make new legislation to ensure home grown talent. To be fair to Manchester United, as well as spending millions on foreign and domestic players they've always tried to produce their own home grown talent. Whether they'll ever create a batch as good as the one in the mid 1990s is debatable. But with the unbelievable Glazer debt repayments they would be foolhardly to cut back on Youth development.