Andy Burnham - Secretary For Talking Rubbish
Oh dear, but really when will politicians learn to leave things alone? Why not concentrate on the rapidly spiralling out of control shambles that is the olympics, rather than getting involved in a debate about football which seems to be doing just fine thanks. Its bad enough that football supporters have to listen to mad man Fergusmoans increasingly incoherent ramblings and digest the Barwick/Platini clusterfuck that controls our beautiful game. Sure everyones got an opinion but just because you are part of the government it doesn’t mean you’re most qualified to decide!
Anyway, Burnham has given this rather long and dull interview in which he speaks about stuff and other stuff most of it boring. Who cares about you’re thoughts on education Andy, its not your job.
Also I’m not sure when the role of border police was added to Burnhams suite of responsibilities, but the man’s getting a bit excited about limiting foriegners in english teams.
His own favourite sport is cricket - “It’s a myth that all I do is football,” he said. Er - well it is all you bang on about fella. After all its football he has his eyes firmly set on again:
Mr Burnham believes that there is a serious problem with the number of foreigners playing in the Premier League. “I’m not xenophobic in any way but I care about the health of English football, the state of the grassroots game, the quality of the competition and the ability to win of the national team,” he said.
1. The health of English football? English football was the highest grossing domestic league in the world last year. It seems pretty healthy, especially when players can pick up £200k a week in wages.
2. The state of the grassroots game? Belonging to two local leagues myself it seems just fine - i even drive past the rec on a weekend and see youth teams battling it out. But even if the grassroots game was dying a swans death - how would limiting highly paid profesionals help?! Its not like every grassroots team has a couple of spanish players? Sure they might have Polish players but Andy your government invited them over here and gave them houses (Note: I do not see this as a bad thing but it illustrates my point).
3. The quality of the competition…. I’m sorry but this seasons finale was spectacular when any one of three teams could have won the trophy with 4 matches to go. Give that 50% of the last 8 teams in Europes premier competition were English as well, you’re an idiot if you think foreign players “damage” the competition. And don’t pretend that you need to spend loads of money to stay up at the top of the table, Spurs/Sunderland/Manchester City all spent 2-3 times as much as arsenal last season and still ended up nowhere, in comparison to Liverpool who’ve spent £100m chasing waterfalls in the league.
4. The national teams winning streak…. Sven Goran Erikson was the countries most successful post-war manager ever. Statistical fact. And we sacked him because like our playes (see Bentley) we’re so arrogant and over confident we think we deserve to win everything. Spain are a perfect example of a great talented team who’ve won the square root of nothing until this seasons European Championships - the difference this season was they had a manager who had a young team and kept them playing together, rather than pandering to the masses and trying to force old players into a team which they didn’t fit - much like England trying to force Fat Frank Lampard and Gerrard to play together. You do realise that it definately isn’t foreign players fault that the FA appointed Steve McClaren as manager of the national side right?
“It was a bitter pill to take not being at Euro 2008. We have to ask some hard questions about whether we are doing enough to give young English players a chance. We need to maximise the home-grown talent for the national team to draw on.” There must, he thinks, be national rules because without them the clubs would all compete to recruit top players from all over the world.
“It is like an arms race, bringing in the best from outside. It would be more healthy to get more home-grown talent and encourage clubs to train and nurture people.”
As i stated yesterday, Arsenal have just signed 6 youngsters on professional contracts - we’ve also got Theo Walcot and given the league the “talent” of David Bentley and Jermaine Pennant. We wouldn’t do that if we didn’t have the money and we wouldn’t have the money if, as Andy suggests, we got hoofed back to the footballing dark ages. I loved Perry Groves and Ray Parlour, but really is it not better for these youngsters to be playing alongside world class players such as Ronaldo, Fabregas or Ballack? The alternative is training with Fat Terry from Plymouth and Big Dick from Stockton.
I see it as the youngsters coming through Arsenals youth team now have massive advantages over those from say Charlton/Wimbledon/Dagenham Redbridge etc - firstly Arsenal have the finances to give them the very best in training facilities. This is paid for in part by the cash flow generated by the foreign players at the club. These players are amongst the best in the world and can pass on knowledge, experience and skills to the youngsters. Ramsey didn’t come to Arsenal from Cardiff because we give him free ice cream.
“I would be quite prepared to go to Europe and say ‘this is our proposal let’s see if we can get clearance for this’. The debate is around applying EU law sensitively.”
Our friend Andy is also accutely aware that it is illegal under European law to ban anybody from work as long as they have the right - its racial discrimination and the goverment have worked hard to introduce free trade and movement for skilled workers. This is to be applauded, but not when the government want to do an about turn and block skilled workers for working for sports teams just because they have the wrong birth certificate. Double standards is still double standards Andy even if you ask nicely.
Now, do us a favour and stop the olympics sliding down the toilet and if you really want to meddle, get rid of that idiot in charge of your party.
Filed by Kieran at July 27th, 2008 under Blog, Complaint!, Football, Politics, Topical?