Ludicrous sums.
With Luke Shaw's transfer fee and England's woeful, woeful World Cup performance in mind, I've come up with a way to fix the English club game (which you might not recognise as broken, but you will) and sort the national game in the process, though it'll take a couple of generations..
Here's the problem in a very large nutshell:
50+ years ago, football clubs were the community. I don't just mean they occupied an important position in it - they were it. Everyone went down to watch the team play - pre-war, the stadia still used today to host 25k people were getting 70k crowds - and young lads dreamed of playing for their home team. Moreover, the home team was full of locals... These were guys you went to school with, worked with, drank with, lived next door to - these were YOUR guys.
I mean, let's look at Liverpool's league winning 1966 team:
1966 Liverpool XI (Charity Shield team)
Gerry Byrne - England international, 9 years at Liverpool (2 season after; one club player), born in Liverpool
Ian Callaghan - England international, 6 years at Liverpool (12 further seasons after), born in Liverpool
Roger Hunt - England international, 8 years at Liverpool (3 further seasons after), born in Wigan
Chris Lawler - England international, 6 years at Liverpool (9 further seasons after), born in Liverpool
Tommy Lawrence - Scotland international, 9 years at Liverpool (5 further seasons after), born in Dailly
Gordon Milne - England international, 6 years at Liverpool (1 further season after), born in Preston
Ian St. John - Scotland international, 5 years at Liverpool (5 further seasons after), born in Motherwell
Tommy Smith - England international, 4 years at Liverpool (12 further seasons after), born in Liverpool
Willie Stevenson - Scottish (no caps), 4 years at Liverpool (1 further season after), born in Leith
Geoff Strong - English (no caps), 2 years at Liverpool (4 further seasons after), born in Northumberland
Ron Yeats - Scotland international, 5 years at Liverpool (5 further seasons after), born in Aberdeen
With the exception of Strong, all the English players were born within 25 miles of Liverpool or within Lancashire, were internationals and had been at the club 4 or more years. Now compare to Manchester City's league winning 2014 team.
2014 Manchester City XI (League Cup Final team)
Sergio Aguero - Argentina international, 3 years at City, born in Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Martín Demichelis - Argentina international, 1 year at City, born in Cordoba (Argentina)
Edin Dzeko - Bosnia international, 3 years at City, born in Sarajevo (Former Yugoslavia)
Fernandinho - Brazil international, 1 year at City, born in Londrina (Brazil)
Aleksander Kolarov - Serbia international, 4 years at City, born in Belgrade (Former Yugoslavia)
Vincent Kompany - Belgium international, 6 years at City, born in Brussels (Belgium)
Samir Nasri - France international, 3 years at City, born in Marseilles (France)
Costel Pantilimon - Romania international, 2 years at City, born in Bacau (Romania)
David Silva - Spain international, 4 years at City, born in Valencia (Spain)
Yaya Toure - Cote d'Ivoire international, 4 years at City, born in Bouake (Cote d'Ivoire)
Pablo Zabaleta - Argentina international, 6 years at City, born in Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Uhh, yeah. That thing about the 1966 Liverpool squad? Not that. Exactly not that. Zabaleta and Kompany have put in a good spell at the club and Kompany has the nearest birthplace to City... but it's 800 miles away. Who lives next door to, drinks with, works with or went to school with Martin Demichelis? Probably Sergio Aguero, but certainly not anyone in Moss Side since the footballers now all live out in Alderley chuffin Edge.
Today's teams don't have locals in them - Liverpool and Everton do reasonably well (by comparison to City, which isn't exactly an achievement) in this regard it has to be said, while Manchester United have only one player from Manchester and Chelsea have one player from at least close to Chelsea (Welbeck; Terry) and that's about it. They aren't part of the community any more - they drag in players from overseas, typically chunks of national teams en masse so there's ready-made connections to instantly get results - and the hardcore season ticket holders flock in to watch them while the rest of the public are alienated by the insane salaries these journeymen entertainers command while wearing the shirts you love but they don't really care about.
While the 1966 Liverpool team was full of England internationals playing with each other week in, week out, 2014's City squad isn't - though Zabaleta, Demichelis and Aguero are getting good game time before Argentina internationals. This has a knock-on effect in the national game. You know I picked the 1966 league winners for a reason - let's have a look at the matchday XI for the World Cup final:
1 Gordon Banks - born in Sheffield, played for Leicester City in '66
2 George Cohen - born in Kensington, played for Fulham in '66
3 Ray Wilson - born in Bolsover, played for Everton in '66
4 Nobby Stiles - born in Manchester, played for Manchester United in '66
5 Jack Charlton - born in Ashington, played for Leeds United in '66
6 Bobby Moore - born in Barking, played for West Ham in '66
7 Alan Ball - born in Farnworth, played for Blackpool in '66
9 Bobby Charlton - born in Ashington, played for Manchester United in '66
10 Geoff Hurst - born in Tameside, played for West Ham in '66
16 Martin Peters - born in Newham, played for West Ham in '66
21 Roger Hunt - born in Wigan, played for Liverpool in '66
At a quick glance, we can see 4 of the 11 played for their hometown clubs, while 2 others played for clubs within 40 miles of their birthplace and of the remaining 5 (Banks, Wilson, both Charltons and Hurst), 1 had recently moved from such a club (Banks, from Chesterfield) and another played for what became his hometown club when his parents moved to Essex when he was 6 (Hurst). The Charltons were born in the North East but had strong family ties to Leeds through the Milburns, so only really Bobby (who played his career in Lancashire) and Ray Wilson buck this trend of kids who played for hometown teams around the time of the World Cup - 82% of England's players played for their childhood clubs, or thereabouts.
Now let's check out the omnishambles who played the 2014 Italy game:
1 Joe Hart - born in Shrewsbury, plays for Manchester City
2 Glen Johnson - born in Greenwich, plays for Liverpool
3 Leyton Baines - born in Liverpool, plays for Everton
4 Steven Gerrard - born in Liverpool, plays for Liverpool
5 Gary Cahill - born in Dronfield*, plays for Chelsea
6 Phil Jagielka - born in Manchester, plays for Everton
9 Daniel Sturridge - born in Birmingham, plays for Liverpool
10 Wayne Rooney - born in Liverpool, plays for Manchester United
11 Danny Welbeck - born in Manchester, plays for Manchester United
14 Jordan Henderson - born in Sunderland, plays for Liverpool
19 Raheem Sterling - born in Kingston (Jamaica), plays for Liverpool
Well. We've got Baines, Gerrard and Welbeck playing for their home teams, while Henderson was relatively recently transferred away from Sunderland. Of the rest, Rooney and Johnson did once play for their home teams but it was two World Cups ago. 36% of England's players played for their childhood clubs (being kind I looked up the subs too - Barkley and Wilshere both play for home teams... ish, while Lallana is nowhere near... makes it 40%).
So what's the problem? Well, there's three.
The first is that the domestic game is becoming dominated by international professionals who go where the money and trophies are. This isn't a massive problem - just like multiculturalism, players from other parts of the world bring new ideas and if they're in high level national teams (note that only two of the City squad play for non-WC2014 qualifiers) they can teach young English players things they can't learn from old English players. But they have no connection to or real appreciation for the club - it's just a job. They don't care for the club as much as a local kid or fan does and the clubs are divorced from the community.
The second is that clubs are signing international players from the same nation en masse. City have the backbone of Argentina (and four of Spain's fringe squad), Chelsea have Brazilian internationals in all positions (except keeper) and Liverpool and Arsenal give regular games to the French squad (though Liverpool and Everton also do a good job with relatively local English players too). It's a great idea for the club's on-field performance - ready-made international partnerships who know how each other play provide instant results - but by giving other nations' players more time to hone their connections, we enhance other nations' performance at the expense of our own.
As a result of this pursuit for domestic (and European) success by courting the same high value assets as every other European club, transfer fees (and salaries) for international players are absolutely insane, while clubs who don't want the bad PR of fielding the same wholly foreign teams that Manchester City fielded above go after talented English players and drive up their prices too.
So what's the solution?
PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor says that a minimum of 3 "homegrown" British players must start any Premier League game. Nice idea, but it doesn't fix the bloated transfer fees or the lack of community interaction. "British" isn't good enough - it just makes British players more valuable and big clubs buy up all the small clubs' top players for squad rotation and this will have no overall positive effect on the England team.
My solution is that 40% of any team's matchday squad (that's 6 of the 15) for any game in any domestic league or cup match must be players who were born within a circle centred on the club's own centre circle encompassing one million population**.
Now, this will have a few interesting effects. Firstly, your club's local players become immensely valuable to your club (actually, they might become valuable to your rivals too - buying them so you can't have them - but the current 25-man squad cap should ameliorate that) and because they need to be good enough to actually play, your club has to invest in your community. Clubs will invest in sports facilities and training to make the players good enough, they'll invest in local grass roots football and non-league clubs to act as feeders, they'll invest in schools to find the players, they'll invest in hospitals and housing so that more people are born and live near the club rather than near to rival clubs... cities with two or more teams will compete for resources as the million circles overlap and they'll compete to be the club that invests more in the community in ways I haven't even thought of yet.
With non-local British and foreign players less in demand and all the investment going into youth talent scouting and training, the less our clubs will be willing to pay for big name internationals, though there'll still be need for their talents. In the short term this means losing out on your Ronaldo, Hazard, Toure, Suarez et al. transfers and it probably means quite a lot of early European exits (though Liverpool may be rubbing their hands still!) as other nations' clubs aren't hamstrung by this requirement.
The benefits to England will take a couple of World Cups - probably three or four - for the first crop of this talent to break into the first team squads. With the local kids playing together in club football, we'll be giving chunks of England a run out together every week rather than the Belgian national team, though the benefits to the clubs will take a few more years than that. Eventually, over the years, we'll reach a point where clubs are back to being majority British and, much more than that, majority local and focal points of the community again. And competing for European honours while England are competing for trophies.
* Not quite Sheffield, not quite Chesterfield
** I've picked population, not distance, so it doesn't unfairly hinder more rural clubs; the million people closest to a club are most likely to be the people who support it [insert Manchester United joke here] and most clubs will overlap one another this way - leading them to focus on different areas where spending ability is at a disparity; I don't have an answer for how it'd work if a club decided to do an MK Dons...
they're right you know.
