I was thinking of seeing how many incoming vs outgoing Americans there were this year. However, I gave it up simply because there's a high number of Americans moving to NASL or USL Pro teams. This is a good thing for their development. It also makes it a lot harder to figure out whether things are better this year or not.
Silly for me to answer a post that is almost a year old but, here goes anyway. Owen Hargreaves was nowhere near the first to play for England while playing in a foreign league. But, he was the second player to get a call up to the England team without ever playing in England. And he is the only player to get called up to the England team before ever living in the United Kingdom.
Joe Baker he was called up to England when he was still playing in Scotland for Hibernian(he would eventually play for Arsenal) which is where he started his professional career. . Fun fact his older brother Gerry was born in the US and ended up representing the US 7 times.
He was in a trivia question I messed up once: Name the Americans that have played at least one game for Chelsea's first team................................
FA commission: New four-point plan to boost England football http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/27327502
I haven't reviewed the commission's plans in any detail, but it seems to do a tremendous job of outlining critical areas for improvement. Quoted from @Scotty 's BBC link below: The four problem areas identified by the FA commission Area 1 - Inadequate and insufficient playing opportunities for 18-20 year-old elite players at top clubs. Area 2 - Regulation of the player market in England is not effective in preserving the desired balance of British, EU and non-EU players in clubs. Area 3 - Coaching and coach development, essentially at grassroots level, have not yet reached a satisfactory level and impact. Area 4 - England lags behind in the quantity and quality of affordable grassroots facilities, particularly in the provision of all-weather pitches.
From BBC, recent comments from English FA chairman Greg Dyke: Dyke was also asked if he thought England would never win another World Cup. "Never say never," he said. "But it's difficult - 33% of players in the Premier League are qualified to play for England. "Really in the top six clubs last year it was down to 23%. If you look at transfer activity this year - apart from a couple of Southampton players that have gone to Liverpool or United - everyone else that has come in has come from overseas. "It's going to get tougher and tougher until we do something about it." http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/28421879
I think DC United has started and all American team a few times now that Espindola is hurt. 17 of 18 on the gameday roster are often eligible for the US. That is certainly the outlier in MLS. Most teams have a few foreign starters and a few on the bench too.
Englands WC record from '70 onwards: Qtr, DNQ, DNQ,GS,Qtr,Smf, DNQ, 16, Qtr, Qtr, 16, GS Not sure there's much evidence the Prem and the falling % of English players are impacting their NT.
Remember when Barcelona started developing all those players for its first team and then Spain won three major championships? Yeah, that was just a coincidence.
What of all the times Spain weren't winning despite the great club teams of Spanish players? What of all those great pre-Prem English teams which were comprised in large part of English players?
I've been tracking playing time by Americans in MLS and we're up .09% this season over last year's final numbers! Or in other words, exactly the same. Americans have accounted for 54.77% of all MLS minutes this season. This includes a handful US-eligible players raised abroad and excludes a slightly larger amount of Americans who have opted to play for other national teams. The most "American" team is D.C. United, whose Americans have accounted for 83.05% of all minutes. At the opposite end is Vancouver, who clocked in at 19.24%. This is down over 8 percentage points from 2013, which means they've taken over last place from Portland. Let's not give the Timbers any credit, though -- they've declined as well and give less than a quarter of available minutes to US-eligible players.
Spain imported Puskas and di Stefano. It didn't produce them. The only pre-EPL period where English teams were great was around 1980. The best of those teams was Liverpool, and it was led by Scots Dalglish, Souness and Hansen. Scotland qualified for both the 1978 and 1982 World Cups and gave solid accounts of itself.
There aren't going to be any arguments that apply perfectly to every single player, but I'm curious where you're going with the Messi example. When La Masia trains players from other countries, the national teams that benefit won't be Spain.
Interesting to see these figures. One side factor to consider is that the balance of imports/exports has given MLS access to a bigger share of the US player pool. Over the past year-and-change, Dempsey, Bradley, Parkhurst, Edu, Goodson and Bocanegra have all returned from abroad, and I can't think of a single US-eligible player of note who left.
I don't think you can pin all of England's problems on that. However, when the percentage of England-eligible players in their top division has dropped to less than one-third, and the trend shows no sign of reversing, I would say at the very least that it's cause for concern.
For an added comparison, the Canadian clubs continue to be in a kind of hokey-pokey with their own country's younger players. Doneil Henry is the only Canadian under age 30 who is currently starting for any of them. Meanwhile, in their respective most recent games, Osorio got only 10 mins off of the bench, Teibert was a DNP, and Ashtone Morgan didn't crack TFC's 18. On the bright side, Montreal did handed a debut to 19-year-old Jeremy Gagnon-Lapare as a sub. And of course, all of those Canadian guys are still very young, so their future situations may end up being a lot brighter than their present.
They have the Championship league, how many English players play there? Just because English players are not good enough for the EPL does not mean they do not have a large pool of players,
The current pool of 110-120 American MLS starters is not too bad but the reality is that we are not 10 deep in each position. In particular, I don't think we have more than two or three starting CAMs. This development imbalance really causes problem for the USMNT. Ultimately, this is a problem that will self correct as MLS is more succesful in taking control of youth development at a younger age. We will see more CAMs just as we are finally seeing more young American CFs. Why? because it just makes more financial sense. Bringing in a foreign CAM is currently a must but it's also expensive. A team that develops one on their own hits the financial jackpot. We're seeing some good development in CFs after quite a few dry years. I expect that in the next decade we'll see more CAMs. A second but more pernicious problem is when the league as a whole has weak spots. MLS is weak on the sides and reserves it's big contracts for central players. It's pretty noticeable that the league was very successful this year in sending very strong central defensive players to the World Cup. This is a natural consequence in having big name CFs and CAMs. The quality of opposition is high for our CBs and DMs and the natural outcome is that we have developed comparatively good ones. Meanwhile the league has skimped on wide players and it shows in the CONCACAF level (see point 3 in this week's Armchair Analyst.) Arguably, it shows in the USMNT as well. Overall, we see that our development requires a good balance between foreign and local talent. 100% foreign talent means no development. 100% local talent can mean unbalanced competitive levels. Obviously it's better to err on the side of local talent but there is certainly something to be said for increasing the level of competition.
Developing a CAM may be a financial jackpot, but it's also the hardest position on the field to develop. Even if you have a young Luis Gil, how much are you willing to sacrifice in short-term results in order to help him grow into a role that he may or may not end up being able to fill successfully?