After our failure to get the 2018 World Cup I think it is time we withdrew from all future FIFA competitions and went back to basics. I mean it's not like we will ever win anything anyway and seriously, is anyone really interested in international football anymore? So instead of playing round after round of pointless qualifying matches against the likes of Andorra and Macedonia why don't we bring back the Home Internationals?
For those of you not old enough to remember, England used to play Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland every year in a mini league with the winners lifting the prestigious Home International trophy. Lets not forget this was a competition England used to win on a regular basis...
I accept that times have changed which is why I am suggesting a slight tweak to the old format. The new competition would run every summer and include the Republic of Ireland and possibly France, making it like a football version of the rugby Six Nations. Each country would play the others on a home and away basis making for a ten game competition, with the group winners lifting the trophy. The matches could be played between May and July every year. Surely these games would attract far more interest then the current qualifiers?
The blank dates in the calendar, which are currently filled with these qualifiers, could see us play some of the African or South American nations in friendlies to prepare the squad for the big competition in the summer.
So while the rest of the world go off to Brazil, Russia and Qatar we could be travelling no further then across the channel to play in a tournament we just might have a chance of winning...
Yes, I understand the counter argument is that unless we are playing competitive football against the best nations in the world our players will not develop, but how much has playing in these tournaments helped them develop over the last 15 years? If anything they have gone backwards.
Our last decent tournament was Euro '96 while our last decent one on foreign soil was Italia '90; twenty years ago! The so-called 'Golden Generation' have failed in every tournament from 1998-2010 and if they really have been our best group of players in a generation then what hope do we have for the future?
Back in the days before FIFA the only international football we played was amongst ourselves. Because of that we regarded ourselves as the best in the world and it was not until Hungary beat us at Wembley in 1953 that we realised others had not only caught us up but left us behind. We have never really learnt from that and I doubt we ever will so maybe the time has come to accept defeat. The rest of world football hates us anyway so we won't be missed. So lets stick our two fingers up to them and show that we don't need them. The new Six Nations competition would be a great way of doing that...and it might just revive our interest in international football again...
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