England lick their wounds, what’s our future?

With the World cup well and truly over, the inevitable void of nothingness is filled by the seemingly endless reports on “what went wrong” and “how we can change”.

England on paper had a disastrous world cup, with no wins and 1 draw to their name. Thankfully other world cup results sidelined England’s “woeful” performance [Mirror].

[BBC]

I, like many others, watched this game and honestly couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It wasn’t just a win it was a dissection of the home nation.  The clinical passes, clean finishes made Brazil look like school boys. Germany then went on, quite deservedly, to win the world cup.

This overall success has been placed on the way the German’s restructured their team training and coaching system. A snap shot of the coaching numbers and you see why.

United Kingdom: 2,769 (1:812*)
Germany: 34,970 (1:150*)
Spain: 23,995 (1:17*)

 *Ratio of Players to coaches.

What is happened now is rather interesting. The questions being asked are along the lines of “How can we be more like Germany?” How did they change? It is an impressive argument and a story of reflection, hard decisions and tough calls.

The Germans rebuilding was put in place after 2000 Euro when they didn’t get past the group stages and finished bottom of their group.  This humiliation and copulation rattled the country to its core; Deuschland were beaten. The rebuilding of the nation’s pride and success lay in the hands of the next generation [Guardian].

Then starting from the ground up they ensure the coaching, training and support was there for the countries home talent. This has ultimately led to them winning the world cup.

The press keep asking can we do what the Germans did? [BBC] The question of England taking this route is hard. The mindset of “doing what Germany are doing” in my eyes the wrong goal. It has taken years of hard graft and dedication to change Germany.

It will take just as long to change England’s methods and by that point Germany would be years further on we wont be there.

The goal should be “"We have to be one step ahead, not one step behind." Stuart Lancaster Let us, England, be the trend setters. Then we might have a chance of catching up.

The English rugby team did a similar thing[Telegraph 2003]. 

Now to have this attitude “let us be the trend setters” in it is quite dangerous as it does assume as certain amount of bullishness and arrogance. Too much of this can lead to disaster.

So what we want is confidence to change and belief that we can make a difference happen. England is the lowest ranked it has been for years, so if it fails. What difference would it really make?