Back of the Net!

As the FA’s Director of Football, Sir Trevor Brooking is responsible for all levels of the game and how it is played - with a particular focus on grassroots and youth football.

Britain - and England in particular - is apparently years behind Europe in the way children are taught to play the game.  Brooking’s job is to change this, channel investment into a superior coaching infrastructure and provide clubs and ultimately the national team with a better depth of talent.

Apparently, however, the FA have been sitting on the investment capital.

Do the men in suits who convene at Lancaster Gate and control the English game - without actually knowing much about it - have an excuse from banning Brooking from relevant meetings?

You only have to look at the youth policy at Brooking’s club West Ham United over the years to envisage how a national program might work.

“We’ve got some fantastic examples of good work going on,” he said. “Having said that, there are some clubs that are not so good.

“What we would want to try to do, as the governing body, is to support them much better, to go out and do in-service stuff and let them know what’s happening in the bigger clubs.

“That is the sort of service the governing body, but for the last two-and-a-half years there has been a vacuum.

“We would like to give much better support than we are giving. I think as a governing body at the moment, we are not giving enough.”

Isn’t it time the FA stopped obsessing over money and failing the game as whole, and got on with it’s job?

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