Access to players is another thorny subject, and while Dave Parnaby thinks he has “great” access to players, Southampton’s former youth coach George Prost believes access to certain age groups in England is limited and damaging.

Solve it, says the Frenchman, who was head of Marseille’s academy for seven years, and England’s 40-odd years of hurt will come to an end. “At Southampton, I had exactly the same access to the under-17s, 18s and 19s as I did in France,” says Prost, whose under-18s won the FA Premier Academy League in 2006. “But it’s the golden age – the under-13s, 14s and 15s – that England are missing out on. This is the age where tactically and technically they are the most receptive, but in England they only have two sessions a week. In France it would be five times a week. If this age group trained five times a week in England, you would be world champions in five years. I’m serious.”

Prost goes on to explain other factors that work in England’s favour. “French teenagers are crazy and undisciplined,” he explains in his typically colourful French accent. “But English lads are brilliant. They are self-motivated and they have a natural fighting spirit that French lads don’t have. The facilities are fantastic too, so for a coach, it’s a dream to work in England.” That said, after five years on the South Coast, Prost is leaving Saints to return to France. He cites “personal reasons” – but reading between the lines, he’s had enough of battling to get access to players he believes he could turn into world beaters. “In England, education is the most important thing,” Prost says in a deflated manner. “The FA needs to challenge this problem. At Marseille, I had a partnership with the directors of all the schools and colleges to make sure we got the players every day. It’s like this all over Europe.” Except in England, of course.

Prost is scathing about many of the attitudes in the English game. “Maybe because England invented the game,” says Prost, “the coaches don’t feel they have anything to learn. But the best coaches are curious and travel the world to pick up ideas.”

One such English coach is Steve Wigley, who worked with George Prost at Southampton as academy director. Most remember Wigley for his ill-fated 14-match tenure as the Saints’ first team coach in 2004, but there are few who have as much experience at coaching juniors. As well as his time at Southampton, Wigley worked with Paul Hart at Nottingham Forest’s academy and with England’s under-21s.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Holland and France,” says Wigley. “And for me the best players need to be playing with and against each other regularly. That brings out the best in them because of the competition. In France they have regional centres where the best players come together to practise.” Wigley points to the Manchester United youth team of 1992, which boasted the likes of David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs, and believes that the more quality players you can get together on the same training pitch, the better. The West Ham youth side of the same period, which featured Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard, is another example of how competition within a group can help accelerate progress.

“In England, take the South Coast,” Wigley continues. “At Southampton, I might have had three or four really good players in the same age group at any given time. Portsmouth would have three or four, Brighton one or two and Bournemouth one or two. All those players would’ve improved if they’d come together in a regional centre, but it doesn’t happen here.”

What also doesn’t happen in England is the release of the club’s best young players to compete in international tournaments. When Steve Wigley worked with the country’s under-21s, he noticed a clear ambivalence on the part of the clubs when it came to tournaments like the World Youth Championship and other youth tournaments. “We played against Portugal when Ronaldo was only 17. He was playing for Sporting Lisbon’s first team at the time, but he played against us in May and then went on to play for Portugal U20s in Toulon in June. That was seen as acceptable, but that wouldn’t have happened in England.”

In 2003 Everton manager David Moyes refused to allow 17-year-old Wayne Rooney to play for England under-20s in the World Youth Championship in the United Arab Emirates. Instead, England fielded an under-strength team with Michael Chopra and Eddie Johnson up front and were knocked out at the group stages after defeats to Japan and Egypt. Compared to Spain, Holland, France and Portugal, England’s record at international youth level is poor. “I think if you don’t start winning those tournaments, it’s harder to win one further down the line,” says Wigley ruefully.

If you wanted a comprehensive list of the problems with youth development in England, you could write a book – a thick one. But as well as financial, organisational and structural problems in the system, talk to the people in the know and they’ll also tell you there are deep-seated cultural problems that need resolving before progress can be made.

David Winner’s book Those Feet: An Intimate History of English Football offers a clear picture of how English football developed out of a desire to prove one’s manliness. The Victorians essentially saw football as a rough and tumble sport in which namby-pambies weren’t welcome. Blood and sweat were a minimum requirement. Not much has changed in the intervening 150 years, and historically English football has always viewed creativity, delicacy and individuality with the utmost suspicion. Just ask Charlie George, Rodney Marsh, Glenn Hoddle and Matt Le Tissier, among others, whose sublime skills and penchant for playing entertaining football didn’t go down well with a succession of England managers.

“Look at a player like Ronaldinho,” says Dario Gradi. “When Brazilians practise, all they want to do is caress the ball, do keepy-ups and tricks. I try to get my boys to do this, but as soon as my back is turned they smash the ball in the back of the net!” Gradi seems to be suggesting that English players have some kind of flawed DNA when it comes to skill and inventiveness. “We had a player called Rodney Jack,” explains Gradi. “He could do anything with the ball, but he’s from the Caribbean.”

Dave Parnaby also believes there needs to be a “cultural revolution” in England if progress is to be made. “The North East is a vibrant area when it comes to youth football,” says Parnaby. “But there are a lot of ugly aspects to organised football. We’re struggling to recruit referees because of abusive parents on the sidelines. The coaches of youth teams often say that winning isn’t important, but when there are two youth teams, one in Newcastle shirts and the other in Middlesbrough shirts, winning is everything. Kids don’t play on the streets anymore and they’ve always got a coach, a parent or a referee telling them what they can or can’t do. That’s no way for them to develop skills.”

Simon Clifford believes Futebol de Salao can help do that, but above all else he thinks the biggest cultural change that is required in this country is the eradication of what he calls a “culture of sloppiness”.

“A lot of managers don’t like players to do extra training in case they get injured,” Clifford says, speaking from his bitter experience at Southampton. “But the fitter the player, the less chance there is of them getting injured.” You only have to look at England’s disastrous World Cup campaign last year to see how such attitudes have contributed to failure. In Germany, Frank Lampard and other senior players complained that they weren’t doing enough training because coach Sven-Göran Eriksson was worried about injuries.

In Clifford’s time at Southampton, he claims the younger players also wanted to do extra sessions, but the idea of extra work is often frowned upon in the English game. “Theo Walcott, Dexter Blackstock and Leon Best all enjoyed the extra work I did with them,” says Clifford. “Nathan Dyer went out on loan to Burnley and after a month he rang me to say he wasn’t training enough. But it seems in this country if you put in the extra work you get called a ‘busy bastard’. That seems to be a well-used term in football. Boxers and other
athletes all do extra training, but it’s uncommon for footballers in England.”

However, some clubs are getting their players to put in the extra hours – and, as Clifford demands, do extra work on individual skills. Manchester United has hired a dedicated skills coach, Dutchman Rene Meulensteen, who works with the club’s youngsters and has also had a positive effect on Cristiano Ronaldo this year. Tottenham has another Dutchman, Ricardo Moniz, doing a similar job – but not all clubs are so enlightened.