[SaltergateBorn]

I give you this, on which to ponder and discuss.

[i]The World Cup - and After

WHY ARE ENGLAND SO FAR DOWN THE COURSE

Why are England `down the course` in world football? All doubts have been removed by the ........exposure of our inferiority in the World Cup tests I watched during June-July....

We have allowed foreign footballers to overtake us in craft and ball-play because we have failed to work at the game, to practice with the ball, and to develop equal physical fitness.

Complete ball control developed in youth is the first essential to real stardom. It is so much developed in youth by [other countries] that when the players first enter first-class football the clubs pay equal, if not more, attention to augmenting physical fitness by physical training on an intense disciplined system, including exercises specifically intended to assist football leaps, twists and turns and suppleness.

Britain has fallen behind because its league games are so important that clubs are scared of experimenting in tactics in case they lose points.

How many players in our league teams can use both feet? Not more than 1 or 2 in our [top flight] and the proportion is lower in the [lower leagues], whereas every full-time professional player should be proficient with both feet.

We shall not get far along the road to recovery until a) the league is divided into 6 sections to provide a shorter programme b) the relegation nightmare is reduced in intensity so that football is less frenzied and c) such reorganisation leaves a month of the season clear for assembly of the England team to fulfil international matches....


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This is all eminently sensible stuff and represents very modern thinking, don`t you think?

Sadly, that is not the case. The above represents an abridged but totally verbatim set of quotes from an editorial to the 1954/55 edition of the Sunday Chronicle Football Annual written by one Ivan Sharpe (1888-1969), a long-time journalist who became President of the Football Writers Association. The World Cup he was talking about was the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland; it seems that, 60+ years ago, our extraordinary and never-to-be-repeated (?) non-performance at the event was followed by great soul-searching and desperate ideas to solve the perceived problems inherent in our game. It`s good to know that these were all acted upon and that we don`t have to suffer like that any more, eh?

(Sorry, Dev, but that`s your fault! You were the one who forced me to go up in the loft and start reading the things again.)

[Devongone]

The piece does not surprise me. Our football was in shock. For years we thought that the World Cup was something for the lesser countries, then we realised the USA could beat us and we were into an era in which the Hungarians for one seemed to be playing a different game - a bit like Spain and Barca and Real in recent times.

It will soon be five divisions, which I've long advocated. The season before that happens we'll have to be well up Division One even to stay where we are.

[SaltergateBorn]

I remember my father and grandfather both telling me about the arrogance of our footballing authorities in those days - even I`m not that old - and their total conviction that we would always be able to see off `Johnny Foreigner` due to our genetic and God-given superiority This came crashing down around our ears, firstly in 1950 (Belo Horizonte and all that) and then the seeing-too that that the Hungarians gave us in `53 and`54. Apparently, we were so convinced that the 6-3 stuffing they gave us at Wembley in `53 was a fluke that we insisted on them giving us a rematch in `54 so that we could put the record straight. So they did; in Budapest. We put the record straight by getting an even bigger seeing-to; 7-1 that time.

I read Billy Wright`s autobiography a few years back. Apparently the England team were nearly wetting themselves laughing in the warm-up at Wembley about `the little fat bloke` that Hungary were playing at no.10. Billy had to admit that 90 minutes later they weren`t laughing any more; the`little fat bloke` turned out to be a little fat bloke called Ferenc Puskas who gave him - and the rest of the England team - a complete run-around. I`ve often wondered what became of him. I might be wrong, but I think he may have ended up teaming up with a bloke called Alfredo di Stefano in Madrid. Hmm.....

It just amused me that we were so shell-shocked by this that the 1954 World Cup appears to have been the final knock to our arrogance. I mean, we only reached the quarter-finals, for gawd`s sake. Shock! Horror! It`s a good job the national footballing psyche couldn`t see what was coming down the road or the the whole nation would have been in therapy.

I`m interested in what you say, Dev, about 5 divisions. Firstly, why do you think this would make such a difference? Secondly, don`t you think we already have that in all but name? The conference (or National League, or whatever you want to call it) is pretty much a de facto fifth division anyway, isn`t it? Or do you see the existing league teams being split into 5 divisions to reduce the games played? That would certainly ease fixture congestion, but I`m not sure we actually get too much of that these days, with milder winters and FA Cup shoot-outs rather than 2nd and 3rd replays. At the end of the day, I suspect that money will talk - as always.

[Devongone]

Well we've had four divisions whether 1234, or 123 North and South for all of living memory. Change makes for more change IMO. Once you make five divisions with fewer league matches and the sky doesn't fall in you can contemplate radical change. Five divisions won't have been around for millions of years, the resistance to perhaps a regional conference structure or even six or seven divisions will necessarily reduce.

We're dumping some premier fringe squads into what used to be a paint tin. That experiment will be a ludicrous failure in my eyes, but why shouldn't Manchester Heath be the equivalent of Real Madrid's B Team in the Championship? Why should Premier youngsters have to be loaned to clubs like ours to play against grown men in competitive matches? Why should we be denied seeing rising stars about to be the future of British football, playing together? Away at Bromwich Throstles, nice fixture in my opinion and it'll reinvigorate big moribund clubs and even perhaps attract TV audiences.

Once you've brought 100 league teams into the fold you can't step back. You can't say oh you lot are out now we want to go back to 92 and four divisions. The only way is forward. Did you care less that we went out of the League Cup? Only about 1,000 turned up! We have enough games without it NOW! But a 38 match programme instead of 46 makes a huge difference. There's room to redevelop and reinvigorate cup competitions. Then - playing one that involves a group round won't look so out of place as it does now.

Money always talks, the trick will be to make it talk for the benefit of the game. At the moment it's buying Benteke for Crystal Palace and Shakiri for Stoke, do we want to sustain that, or shake the tree and see if a few of the apples fall in our direction?