England, as a nation in the footballing world, may be on the up after a poor World Cup. However, bar the odd Euros win, you never hear about young English talent winning any continental competitions.
I think this starts right at the bottom.
Grassroots football.
Grassroots football is fading away more and more, and with less money being invested in the system where are the footballers of the future meant to come from?
Roughly, and I mean roughly, thirty-four million pounds is invested each year (twelve million from the FA and Premier League respectively and ten million from the government), but is that really enough? Once again, approximately, the Premier League makes around three billion pounds per year from the game we love. That is only around 0.4%.
0.4%!
If the Premier League truly wanted to improve the game they could give grassroots 0.8%, just 0.4%% more. and that would give them an extra twelve million to play with.
So, let's say the Premier League offered that extra tiny percentage to the grassroots development schemes. New training facilities, equipment, school teaching and the list goes on, could be added to the infrastructure of the beautiful game in England at lower levels. Give a child a football and he will play, it's that simple.
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