The State of Sport in England

The State of Sport in England

England’s green and pleasant land hosted the Rugby World Cup in the autumn of 2015, which saw the host become the first ever host to exit their own competition in the group stages. England started comfortably with an easy victory over Fiji, but defeats to Wales and Australia left England on the brink, relying for Welsh victory against Australia and an emphatic victory over Uruguay. Wales were defeated and the hearts of England fans across the country were shattered. England Rugby was left in a shambles and this is a common theme when it comes to England and major tournaments. England went in to the 2015 Cricket World Cup as World No. 1 for One Day Cricket, and they were knocked out in the group stages after only defeating Scotland and Afghanistan. The football team did no better in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. With a tough draw of Uruguay, Italy and Costa Rica, the expectations of qualifying from the group were high. From the jungle of Manaus to the coast of Belo Horizonte, conditions were tough but a thorough training camp in Miami still wasn’t enough and England failed to win a single match, and was one of the first teams out after defeats to Italy and Uruguay.

To find out why England is failing miserably, there needs to be a serious look at how English sport is run. English football has never been wealthier. Compared even to the giants of the European game, Spain and Germany, its domestic league operates on a different financial level altogether. When the new £5.14 billion broadcasting deal kicks in the 2015/16 all 20 of the Premier League club will be among the 30 richest in Europe, yet England haven’t tasted success in International Tournaments since 1966. The issue with football in England is rife throughout the top leagues as well as in the grass roots. The clubs make sufficient money from their own resources that the international game is an irrelevance. Worse, it is an inconvenience. It leeches off their contracted talent, jeopardises their progress by returning players exhausted and injured from international competition. If they were not bound by long-held FIFA agreement they would frankly rather not release anyone, anytime, never mind for second rate competition like the U21s. The U21s failed to get out of the groups for a second consecutive tournament despite players such as Harry Kane and Jack Butland, who have been stars for their respective teams over the past season.

Moreover, unlike rugby and cricket, which have a direct financial return from producing new young players for the international system, they have no incentive to bring on young Englishmen. Frankly there is too much effort, too much risk, too much uncertainty involved in doing that and for sure, with the majority of them now under foreign ownership, the clubs in the Premier League don’t even have a patriotic imperative to support the England set-up. This is compounded by a sheer lack of English talent in the top leagues, with less than 1/3 of the total minutes played in the Premier League being accounted by English players. In La Liga, home of 2010 World Cup winners and European champions Spain, Spaniards account for 59% of all minutes played. In Germany's Bundesliga, the home of the 2014 World Cup winners, Germans make up 50%. Yet in the Championship, the figure played by English players rose by 7% to 70.5%. Playing time is an issue, as this leads to players losing form, yet when England went to the 2014 World Cup, the manager, Roy Hodgson, picked Wayne Rooney despite not playing in the final month of the Premier League season due to injury. This is a theme that has angered many fans, especially when players such as Sunderland’s Connor Wickham, although untested at International Level, was in much better form.