Finally, after 44 years of long drought, Spain won something big. The UEFA EURO 2008 Championships!! 16 nations fought hard to declare their supremacy at Europe’s biggest stage. It was not a surprise when Spain came out on top by some scintillating display of attractive & breathtaking football. The surprises were teams like Russia & Turkey who reached the last four stage surpassing teams like Italy, Netherlands, France, Croatia, etc. But perhaps the biggest surprise was the absence of England from the championship. Or was it?
If we look at the last four years of club football, it has been dominated by English clubs. In 2005, Liverpool won the Champions League by beating AC Milan in one of the best matches ever played at a night which no football fan will ever forget. Then in 2006, Arsenal reached the finals but eventually losing to the winners, Barcelona. 2007 saw three teams from England reach the semi-finals stage. In 2008, all the four clubs reached the quarter-final stage. But in spite of all this English domination in Europe, the national team didn’t qualify for Euro 2008.
So why is it that a nation so powerful in the UEFA Champions League can only be spectator in Euro 2008? Why can't they qualify when they have so many world class players and managers in their league? The answer lies within the nationality of those world class players and managers. Take a look at the nationality compositions of the 4 clubs that made it through the quarter final, how many of them can be defined as "English"? They had 4 clubs and none of them was managed by an England manager, the closest thing that comes to an England manager is Alex Ferguson and he is Scottish by nationality. Theo Walcott is the only top English player in the Arsenal squad, and he even doesn't have a regular first team football. Liverpool only has 2 English players as regular starters: Steven Gerrard and Jammie Carragher, the same for Chelsea.
With so many foreigners, I don't think it's fair to say that those who were involved in the quarter final can be called as "English team", they should be called a "Global and EU teams who use England as their base" team!!
The EPL always claim themselves as the best league in the world, both in the aspect of quality of play and business which is something I agree about. The EPL always perform quite high quality level every week with fans spread throughout the world. League competition is a way to produce a strong national team, a team that can bring joy and dignity to every it's citizen. The FA should do more evaluation about their system of competition. What's the point of having the so called best league in the world when you don't have a strong national team?
Written by: Digvijay Singh
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