World Cup Fever - Worse than Swine Flu

I’m over it now

The kick-off was 1.30am Thai time so unfortunately as I have to work for a living I decided not to stay up and watch England v Algeria, beside every time I watch England they never perform so I fear that I may be a jinx. The famous 5-1 thrashing of Germany in Munich,

I didn’t see it because when Germany scored first I thought that was it and turned it off and had a massive domestic with the ex instead. So now we in 2010 and it’s all started again, England being rubbish that is.

Well the World Cup has been some what of a disappointment so far, I’m saying that because I am English and as usual my team of overpaid drink drivers has failed to perform. The competition itself after a somewhat slow start has started to provide some entertainment with the French practically on their way home, the ever confident Germans beaten by Serbia and the annoying Argentineans looking like the best team.

Recently the famous (or is that infamous) Franz Beckenbauer publically criticized the English Team and the English Premiership, he said that there were too many foreigners playing in England and so the English Manager didn’t have enough home grown talent to choose from. Of course this comment caused outrage in England and even got a response from the England Manager Fabio Capello, he told Beckenbauer to respect the English Team.

Well, maybe the famous German footballer/manager is right; we have teams spiralling into enormous debt because they are spending ridiculous amounts of money on foreign stars in an attempt to compete with the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United and now Manchester City. The result of this is the Premier League s becoming less and less competitive because the teams that don’t have billionaires behind them simply cannot afford to compete.

So what is the solution, simple restrict the number of foreigners each team is allowed to have on their books. It could be phased implementation with the number reducing every season until every team only had let’s say four foreign players. The vast fortunes that are now being spent on these ‘superstars’ could then be channelled into youth development, ‘A’, ‘B’ and reserve teams, I am sure there is talent out there in England it’s just at the moment they are not getting the opportunity to develop. Some people may laugh at this idea but it has worked in Rugby League, so much so that Super League has developed into very competitive competition. Once it was dominated by four teams, that domination has now been broken with just about all the teams capable of winning the league.

The national team would benefit with increased competition for places and most importantly the spectators would benefit from more competitive matches both in domestic and international games. I think clubs would also start to increase their fan base because people would start to see that their local team was now competing with the big boys.

The good thing for me living out in the wilderness of Trang, Thailand is that there are no other foreigners here to take the piss, and the Thai’s are far too polite to even think about making jokes about England’s performance, beside most Thai’s support England anyway.

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