England’s football team are teetering on the brink of failing to qualify for next summer’s Euro 2008 championships. The consensus of opinion among the fourth estate is that this would be calamitous for English football and that head coach Steve McClaren has proved to be out of his depth, despite serving his apprenticeship under Sven-Goran Eriksson.

There has been much criticism of McClaren’s tactics and team selection and calls for his departure from some of the media and supporters have reached near-deafening proportions. But when you look at some of the players who grace the so-called greatest football league in the world – the much-lauded FA Premier League – it’s not difficult to see why the former Middlesbrough manager’s task is near impossible.

Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are among the finest in the Premier League. But after those three, one starts to struggle to compile an England team that would match the finest Europe has to offer, let alone the rest of the world.

'Like a man told to climb Mount Everest with his legs tied together, McClaren's mission is impossible'


The richest league in the world, with billions of pounds flooding in through television revenue – and Setanta Sports and BT now tugging at the blanket coverage that was previously Sky’s – has attracted players from across the planet. Thirty years ago it was rare to find a player from outside the UK playing in the top flight of English football. Now that situation seems to have almost reversed itself.

Chelsea have the likes of Didier Drogba and Andriy Shevchenko; Arsenal have Cesc Fabregas and Aleksandr Hleb; Manchester United have Ronaldo, Anderson and Nani. All extremely talented players and there are dozens of other foreign players of varying degrees of talent in first teams throughout the Premier League. Now while this makes the league extremely attractive to supporters and, more importantly these days it seems, to television stations, it hardly makes the job of the England head coach any easier.

Ask Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Avram Grant and Rafael Benitez to mould their team into a title challenging one without using players not from these shores and see, firstly, what their response would be and, secondly, where their respective teams would end up.

That’s the task that faces the unfortunate McClaren – nearly an impossible one. Much has been made of the exciting young players now making the breakthrough at Arsenal but, Theo Walcott apart, not many are English. Manchester United are also investing in youth but it’s Portuguese and Brazilian youngsters breaking through. The ‘big four’ clubs now dominating English football would be hard pushed to field 11 top-class English players between them.

If Russia win in Israel in November, then the calls for the head of McClaren will reach a crescendo. But, like a man told to climb Mount Everest with his legs tied together, his mission is impossible. As England slide down FIFA’s international rankings, they need only look over their shoulder at a country poised to overtake them.

For years, Scotland imported players from mainland Europe and further afield. Some were good, Henrik Larsson and Michael Laudrup for example, and some not so good. The Scots plunged down the rankings until they reached the stage where even the Faroe Islands were inflicting embarrassment.

The threat of financial calamity soon had the top clubs in Scotland realising that the future lay on their own doorstep and producing home-grown talent was the way ahead. Five years after scrambling to a 2-2 draw in the north Atlantic, Scotland are now inflicting defeat on France, the second-best team in the world, in their own back yard.

That's something the leading contenders for England’s flagship Premier League may care to reflect on.

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