by Tony Adams
I also hoped that the FA tapped into the experience of people who knew what they were talking about, such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène, though I knew neither would even think about going near the job themselves. Because they know what pretty much everyone inside the game knows and what Gareth was probably worried about: that it really didn’t matter who was appointed because until we re-examine our philosophy of football, its structure and attitudes to the England team, we are condemned to repeat failure.
I had a taste of the England set-up when I worked with the excellent Noel Blake, now sadly departed as part of Dan Ashworth’s purge upon taking the job, for an under-19 game against Turkey during my time in this country when working as adviser for Gabala. It was an enjoyable experience, and being involved in the England set-up again one day remains an ambition for me.
One thing I do know about is defending, and we have got to get back to learning the basics if we are not going to be embarrassed like we were against Iceland. During that under-17 tournament in Azerbaijan that I watched, I looked closely at the England side. And I am well aware that we are decent at that age group, winning European Championship titles under John Peacock in 2010 and 2014.
It struck me that we are producing athletes who are strong, conditioned and well prepared. Technically, though, they are not as good as the Spanish and Portuguese, both of whose defences I again admired at Euro 2016. In fact, the perception abroad is often still that we are all heart and no head, not confident in playing to a blueprint for successful football that suits our qualities.
As I worked with the under-18s at Arsenal that summer, it became evident to me that we do not get the balance right between time spent in the gym and on the pitch. Academy players need to be out on the pitch working more. There’s too much emphasis on sports science nowadays.
When I speak to young defenders and ask them what they want to improve, they often say: ‘my heading’. It is a neglected skill because they don’t get enough practice in these ‘pass, pass, pass’ days. That style of football may be admirable but sooner or later you are going to have to head a ball properly – as we saw in England’s game against Iceland, when we also lacked leadership, I thought.
It was a failure of coaching that Wayne Rooney was caught marking – or not marking – a big centre half at a long throw that brought Iceland’s equaliser, but it was also a lack of leadership in the side which meant that nobody was shouting and sorting out the mismatch.
It’s an old hobby-horse of mine but I still don’t understand why Roy Hodgson didn’t go back to John Terry five years ago. Instead, Roy went for easier, less controversial, options. And we ended up with kids and babies out there, with only Joe Hart and Wayne Rooney in the starting line-up having more than 50 caps. Chris Smalling seemed to be seen as an experienced player, but he went into the tournament with 24 caps, when I think it takes at least 25 to feel confident as an England player.
Nor did I see any evidence of the nous needed to change things. Why, for example, do we press high up the field against a team that just wants to sit deep? So we can look busy and ‘English’ for the fans? Or because it is the vogue, favoured in the Premier League by some overseas coaches?
Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp are fans of the high-press, but too often players in English football tire in the second half of a season because of the intensity of games that they may not have experienced in Spain and Germany, and it might count against Manchester City and Liverpool at the business ends of seasons. We played it at Arsenal for a while in the George Graham era but ran out of steam in the second half of a season. It can also be tiring in hot summer tournaments when games come in quick succession after long domestic seasons.
We should be making sure we get our shape right, to be defensively secure, dropping off to the middle third to allow teams to have the ball in their defensive third, inviting teams on to us and winning the ball further back. OK, so some teams won’t want to attack us. Fine, let them have the ball. They will, trust me, eventually kick it forward to you, whether from a goal kick or in open play, due to a lack of patience. And then you are in your proper starting positions. You can work on that in training, setting out 11 cones to represent those starting positions and, when the ball is lost going forward, getting back to them quickly.
Then you have to open teams up with ingenuity or pace, if the opposition haven’t recovered their own starting positions. England certainly do have pace in players such as Theo Walcott and Marcus Rashford. Opportunities will also come from set pieces, free kicks and corners, and the English have traditionally been strong in those departments.
Having quick, attacking players also gives you the option of being more direct and knocking the ball forward early. Sounds primitive? Spain and Germany don’t mind doing it now and then. And no one would accuse Arsène Wenger of being primitive, but when we had Thierry Henry it made sense to drop off so that the opposition pushed forward, providing space into which to knock the ball for Thierry.
We should recognise that the English strength is as a defensively orientated counterattacking team, but there is a snobbery about defending in the modern Premier League, particularly when it comes to long throws and high balls. People don’t see it as the sexy side of the game. Call me weird, but I do.
And those managers who do coach well defensively often get ridiculed in the demand for attacking football that will please a worldwide television audience. It is why I like Jose Mourinho as a coach. I share his philosophy that if you get things right defensively it gives you more space offensively.
These days – and England and most Premier League sides do it – the fashion is for full-backs to show the opposition’s wide players the outside; that is, to shepherd them down the touchline towards the byline. I don’t like that. I would want them shown inside, across the field. If you show wide players the outside, the back four has to drop deeper into the penalty area to cover the cross, leaving space for oncoming attackers to run into at the edge of the penalty area and its interior.
If you show the wide players the inside, however, they have to lay the ball off and the defence can hold its line along the edge of the penalty area so that attackers don’t penetrate the interior. If you can force a team to shoot from distance, then you’re doing your job. With 85 per cent of goals coming from inside the box, you have a better chance of maintaining clean sheets if you can keep the attacking side outside the box. Statistics, by the way, don’t lie. And they tell you that, at the top level, if you score the first goal you win the game 71 per cent of the time, and don’t lose it 93 per cent of the time.
I see that kind of defending with the Italians and the Germans and saw it with Spain when they were winning tournaments. For all Spain’s attacking talents, it was Gerard Piqué and Sergio Ramos at their peak who were the foundation.
The Premier League has its brand, the FA needs its own vision, and somehow the twain have to meet. The basic conflict is that the Premier League has the money, the FA doesn’t and so has lost much of its influence and power. It probably needs an oligarch to buy the league back and give it to the FA – and I’m only half-joking.
The Premier League may say the England team is not their responsibility, but it is an English competition and owes a debt to the country, in my view. It should also make good commercial sense – a strong national team means people feeling better about our football and thus wanting to go and watch these players play. Or buy satellite TV subscriptions.
If we are to defend England’s honour, as important as the quality of the manager is the need to get things right – and the right people – at the top of the FA then sort out the coaching system. We need to produce more and better-qualified coaches to teach kids the game thoroughly from an early age, and to get better English coaches into club academies.
To do this, I would have preferred regional coaching centres rather than the St George’s Park facility near Burton, but we are where we are. Sadly, this should have been done 20 years ago and we have to real
ise it is going to take time to catch up. We have fallen a long way behind countries such as France and Spain, who had these facilities and structures years before us.
If you look at the statistics, UEFA data shows that for every coach England produces with the B, A and Pro badges, Germany produces 12, Italy 10, Spain eight and France six. And those four nations have regularly been providing the finalists at World Cups and European Championships in the modern era, while England have not appeared in a major-tournament final since 1966.
Surely we have to make the link in a practical rather than theoretical way sooner or later? It might help if the costs were reduced. In Germany, it costs around £400 to put yourself through the system to the Pro Licence; in Spain around £1,000. England? £5,820.
The problem is twofold, with both the dwindling number of English players coming through at the highest levels as well as the lack of English coaches, and opportunities for them. It is something the FA has to do more about if England are to compete.
It is now the clubs’ academies which are producing players – and that is as it should be, as they have the time and expertise on a daily basis – but even through their age-group sides you will now find more and more overseas players, and again that is likely to increase as the years go on, depending on how Brexit regulations about the movement of people are negotiated. Those English players in the academies need to be monitored properly by FA coaches, perhaps 20 of them, based at Burton. Now that we have the facility, we might as well use it properly, not just for Midlands clubs. Those coaches would actually be more like scouts, who monitor players and their progress.
The Premier League also has to allow access for the good of the England set-up. When Sir Trevor Brooking was head of development at the FA, he found it difficult, I believe, to get himself into academies, and it is another area where we need a modifying of attitudes. It might alter what I saw with Noel Blake when I worked with him on the under-19s. He’s a fine coach and loved working with them to the point where he kept them out for a two-and-a-half-hour session. ‘Tone,’ he said. ‘There’s so much to do and I might not see them again for another few months.’
Producing elite English players should be a co operative process between the FA and the clubs. After all, both surely want what’s best for the player. From age five to 12, that means instilling good technique rather than tactics.
Unfortunately in England, safe spaces for kids are becoming fewer. They can’t just go and play in the street like I used to. And there are not as many green spaces sometimes, either. I like what they have done in Holland with an initiative by Johan Cruyff. Cruyff Courts are fenced-off five-a-side areas and there are 80 in the Netherlands. In fact, I’m told no kid is more than an hour’s cycle ride from one. Robin van Persie and Dennis Bergkamp helped get one in Islington and I’d like to see more of them in England.
From 12 to 17 it becomes more about awareness of tactics and formations. Often, a head coach will want all the age-group teams to play the same way as the first team and there might be a worry within a club about a conflict of styles when a player goes to the national team, should it be playing to more ‘English’ strengths.
Well, Dan Ashworth has now established the ‘England DNA’, which hopefully reassures people about good habits being taught. It is, after all, about footballers not systems. Personally, I would want my players being exposed to all sorts of different ways of playing the game to give them every bit of the puzzle. I also think older kids in academies should be put through their coaching badges to give them a fuller appreciation of the game and prepare them for the future if their own playing career doesn’t work out. And for many, it will not.
The other problem we have is that while the England agegroup teams do have some notable successes, not enough players ‘train on’, in horse racing parlance, and become first-team players at the biggest clubs. It is the problem we are also having with English coaches, who are not getting chances any more at potential Champions League clubs.
There is not enough bravery in giving young English talent a go, whether that be from coaches with players or owners and chief executives with coaches. When it comes to players, Arsène Wenger, in fact, is one of the exceptions given his record in recent years of signing and playing young British players.
I have to say, though, that in my experience of the under-18s at Arsenal, there were no real outstanding talents, which surprised me. While they were fine with me, I did also detect a lack of respect towards some senior figures. I happened to overhear a couple wondering what Thierry Henry would know about coaching. The arrogance of youth aside, there seemed to be an attitude that they are Arsenal players already. If some young players in elite academies are not careful, they will soon find themselves in lower-division Football League clubs or even non-league.
English players also have to accept what it takes to become an elite footballer these days. Modern life has many advantages for kids in England, where the standard of living means that most have comfortable lives and do not go hungry, unlike many African and South American players who come from impoverished backgrounds. Many kids, like mine, enjoy a lifestyle where they don’t need to struggle, as well as having many other sporting opportunities. In England at least, players still largely come from the working classes; I certainly don’t see many come from the middle classes or public schools. Of course, we want to produce nice, rounded kids, but they have to be hungry and focused too.
I was part of a group of kids who just had a ball – literally and metaphorically – and I experienced something similar watching the kids in Gabala. They didn’t have phones and laptops, TVs and computer games, but they did have the four cornerstones of development: coaching, practice time, direction and facilities. After that, it comes down to the desire of the player. I am sure we will see an Azerbaijani playing at one of Europe’s top clubs in the next 10 years because they are improving them tactically and technically and giving them every opportunity.
You can’t even say we are giving those things to kids in England any more. More and more pitches are being dug up, with 11-a-side football declining as more play five-a-side, and even with those pitches that are still there, many are not being maintained properly because of council cutbacks. It is difficult to teach kids on mud heaps or where the grass is six inches long. Not that we are teaching kids. The number of coaches at the grass-roots level is as low as the number at elite level. We have too many unqualified ones teaching kids. Again, it is often down to the cost of acquiring qualifications but also to the lack of value attached to youth coaching.
It can still be the same at big Premier League clubs, let alone at the grass roots. Development coaches are barely paid living wages, which means they have to do it part time and have other jobs alongside. We need to value them the way they do in Holland, for example. There, I came across the under-12s coach at one club who had a salary of £35,000 plus a car and a phone. Compare that with the £15,000 on offer that time at Arsenal for the under-12s. And there are certainly not the same amounts of money in the Dutch game as in the English.
As I saw from the salary for the under-18s at Arsenal, it means that career coaches in the development area are few and far between, as often they have to look to get jobs higher up, becoming manager of a Football League side, for example, to earn a decent wage. And then they get killed when they get there. I understand Chelsea have taken steps to remedy the problem and their youth coaches are on £90,000 a year, but in many places coaches seem to be up there with MPs and journalists for respect.
That may be another reason why the lower divisions are not producing players ready to step up, by the way, like they used to. They are not attracting great coaches, given those low salaries. Jamie Vardy is probably the exception that proves the rule and why there is so much attention on him.
In England, you are always going to get, say, the top 10 elite players coming through no matter what. It is depth that England will lack, a high-quality squad of 23 for a World Cup. Unfortunately
, we still have this habit, or sections of our media do, of insisting that certain English players are great talents at too early an age, or when they are not at all, because we don’t look overseas enough to compare. It is also because there is a shortage and thus fewer for them to focus on.
For example, John Stones was hailed as a great new English central defender, first at Everton and then at Manchester City. I have always had my doubts about him, considered him to be average in all honesty, despite this hyping of him as a ball-using defender. I saw him as a Tony Gale, a centre back who passed the ball well, and was good enough to win a Premier League title with Blackburn Rovers, but who did not win an England cap. Such is the dearth of English ball-playing defenders, though, that Manchester City were willing to pay nearly £50 million for Stones.
Like Vardy and Harry Kane, Stones might have had to wait longer in previous eras, but because of the rarity of talent, people do make England squads sooner and caps are cheaper these days. More and more players will be coming from the lower Premier League clubs and even, if we are not careful, from the Championship.
Brexit may help in that one area, with European players having to go through more hoops to get work permits, as the non-European ones do. Thus might English clubs have to look more at native talent and developing it. Who knows, though; new rules may be implemented about free movement for footballers with the Premier League such a plus for the country now. And that might mean more relaxed rules for non-European players too. What we do need to ensure is that we get the balance right between hiring the best and giving our own players the chance to develop.
It could be the same with managers. We already know that the biggest English clubs are not really going to look at English managers in the near future, even though there are some talented ones around. About the only way to get a job in the Premier League is to take a Championship job – as precarious as that is – and try to take a club up. The problem with that is that your club is unlikely to be competitive the following season, so you are just trying to avoid relegation. If you don’t, or don’t even look like doing it after about 10 games, you can be out on your backside.