GOLDEN RULE DOESN’T APPLY TO FOOTBALLERS

And that is bad news for England’s footballers. If they falter at all tonight against the Czech Republic at Wembley, they will be damned by comparison. They will be pilloried for not being like Ben Ainslie, Rebecca Adlington and the rest.

Two views will be expressed. Firstly, our footballers are pampered sloths and, secondly, that the Olympic success story is a blueprint for the footballers.

Both views are wrong.

Our footballers train harder and prepare better than at any time in football history. Just compare their honed physiques with the scrawny players of yesteryear. Yes, footballers are paid vast salaries, but they draw huge crowds and massive TV audiences for nine months of every year – not for a fortnight every four years.

But it is the second argument – that the England football team could learn from the Brits out in Beijing – which needs strangling at birth.

Olympic glory has been achieved by focusing spending on elite competitors. Sports with a chance of medals got more money.

This is not the place or the time to debate that philosophy, but we should acknowledge that is what has happened.
Each cycling medal has cost about £2million, for instance.

The spending has been massive, but it has also been clever. Sir Clive Woodward, the British Olympic Association’s director of elite performance, is a big believer in what is called the “aggregate of marginal advantages” – paying attention to little details so that, together, they make a big difference. That is what he did with the England rugby team in the build-up to winning the World Cup.

But when he tried it in football, as performance director at Southampton, he discovered that the game already has sports scientists, dieticians, psychologists, computer analysis and so on in place.

That is my point. Unlike the Olympic sports in which we are suddenly world-beaters, our football would not and could not benefit from more intensive concentration on its elite. It needs the opposite approach. It needs more funds at the base of the pyramid.

We are getting there with facilities. The Football Foundation is paying for better drainage, new generation
‘plastic’ pitches, decent changing rooms, etc. But coaching for kids is still mostly left to well-meaning dads and stressed and harassed teachers.

If we could find the money to make football coaching at the grass roots a proper career and create a pool of quality coaches who would work in schools and with Sunday teams, then every kid who kicks a ball would
benefit.

Then, eventually, we would have a football team as good as our Olympians.

*Yngling is a type of sailing boat. Keirin is a track cycling event. You knew that, didn’t you?