Do you remember when England won the World Cup? Not surprised. It was ages ago. We invented the game, played it our own way for years, totally ignoring the way others countries had taken to the game and punted the ball to the forwards and hoped for the best. Then the Hungarians arrived in 1953 and destroyed us in “The Match of The Century”. Something must have happened to the country as a whole during that game because just over ten years later, we were the World Champions.

Fast forward 50 years and we’re back to square one on the International scene. With the new Premiership season kicking off last weekend and the first England friendly already upon us, preparation for the World Cup 2010 starts here. Can Fabio Capello be the man to turn our International fortunes around? He has stated very recently that he sees England playing in a similar style to the Spanish team that won the European Cup in the summer. He has seen that we need to change our style of play, adapt to the way the rest of the world play the game, something we had neglected to do for years, and now seem to be doing again. I can see Capello changing the ever present 4-4-2. Sven tried the 4-5-1 but failed. With a bit of Italian flair and not Swedish baldness, Capello may be able to get the England squad moving and shaking again. Capello has the ability to change the way England plays and get beating top teams and making it to the later stages of tournaments. England may be in South Africa long enough for the travelling fans to get a tan.

This is all well and good, but something more needs to be done to improve the England team’s performances. In 1966, after England won the World Cup I bet lots of people thought that we’d finally made it to the top, where we belong. The inventors and the masters of football. Look what happened. Not much. The occasional semi-final and heartbreaking penalty shoot outs and more recently the failure to even qualify for the tournament in the first place.

The “Grassroots” of English football need to be addressed. England needs a steady flow of talented players coming through. Recently, a change in the law was made and under-8’s are no longer involved in competitive leagues. This was a great idea, as it stops the even more competitive parents from pressuring kids into playing to win. I can imagine that if there are really talented under-8’s in the country that their parents may become even more pushy if that child does not perform as well as he could. As an 8 year old, all that pressure must get to them, and no matter how good they are at football they probably don’t want to play it.

So making it more of a fun recreational activity when children are that young can only be a good thing to encourage the youngsters to take up the sport. One other aspect that could increase the amount of footballers we have coming through, and the driving force of this article, is goalposts. Goalposts are up during the football season, understandably. What I do not understand is the fact they are taken down during the summer. The time when children want to play football the most. I have had this discussion with people from other countries, and have been to other countries during the summer months. As far as I have seen, England is the only country that does it. It surely cannot be that difficult to leave them up during the summer, get children involved with the sport, and maybe a few more of them will take it up and become Internationals.

I for one have grown bored of England Internationals and cannot remember actually going out my way to bother watching them. If we want to start winning the big tournaments, then we need to get children interested in the game and a good start would be to keep the goalposts up during the summer. Using jumpers just isn’t the same.

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