New FA chairman sets bold targets

New Football Association chairman Greg Dyke says England should aim to reach the semi-finals of Euro 2020 and win the World Cupin 2022.

But in a wide-ranging speech, Dyke warned England may not be able to compete seriously on the world stage without changes in the domestic game.

“English football is a tanker that needs turning,” he said.

It was very interesting and refreshing listening to Dyke outlining his plans for the English game in the next few years, but I don’t think announcing that England should win the World Cup in 2022 was a good idea.

But finally an FA chairman has finally acknowledged, and pledged to do something about, the key problems in English football, starting with the ever declining number of English players in the Premier League.

 Dyke has said he would consider a quota system but I think that should be a last resort option, instead we should look at why Premier League clubs overlook English players and there’s two reasons for this cost and academies.

The amount of money English players cost is for some reason much more than foreign players of a similar quality, and that puts clubs off buying them, just look at this transfer window as a glaring example of how home-grown players are over-priced. 

Bale was signed by Real Madrid for £85m, yet they paid £80m for Ronaldo, who they signed at the same stage of his career, despite the fact that Ronaldo had achieved much more and was a much more complete footballer at the time. There’s a fairly obvious solution which is to meet with the clubs and advise them to stop charging over-inflated prices for a player just because he’s home-grown.

Secondly the academies of clubs should either be limited to the number of foreign youngsters they can sign or shouldn’t be allowed to sign a foreign youngster under the age of 18, because it’s ridiculous that clubs, particularly the big ones, scrap it out to the death with each other to sign 12 and 13 year olds.

 If either of those doesn’t do the trick then a quota would have to be introduced, and it should be something along the lines of all 20 Premier League teams should have at least six home-grown players in their starting XI, and at least 10 home-grown players in the 18 man match day squad. 

Not sure how it would work in Europe because that’s UEFAs territory, but something like this should be introduced in the Premier League should other measures fail.

One final thing if England is to seriously challenge and get to the last four or win a major tournament then a winter break should be introduced, just look at the record of the national team and compare them to our closest European rivals, whose leagues all have winter breaks, since the formation of the Premier League.

Spain has won a World Cup and two European Championships.

Germany has won a European Championship and has been to the last four  and beyond on numerous other occasions.

Italy has won the World Cup, been to another World Cup final and two Euro finals.

France have won the World Cup, Euro’s and got to another World Cup final.

And England? One semi-final.

If Greg Dyke maintains the same kind of passion and determination we saw yesterday then by the time he’s done English football should be in a much better place.