Bevington outlines England plans
Monday, 19 July, 2010
Club England Managing Director Adrian Bevington outlines England's plans.
While it is now three weeks since England were eliminated from the World Cup in South Africa, the wounds from defeat at the hands of Germany are still raw. Disappointment at departing the competition so early will be felt by Fabio, the players, the staff, the fans and everyone connected with England for some time yet.
Such is the continuous nature of football, dwelling on defeat is not an option and with a qualification campaign for UEFA Euro 2012 beginning in September work has already begun to ensure lessons are learned from the summer.
Club England Managing Director Adrian Bevington spoke to TheFA.com to address many of the key questions being asked by supporters across the country about what happened at the World Cup, and what is being done to give a better chance of success in the future.
The first thing to address is the supporters themselves, and the debt of gratitude that is owed to them and their loyal following of England across the globe.
"Like the whole country everyone involved with the team and at The FA has been massively disappointed by the World Cup performance," Bevington explained.
"We fully understand the fans and the wider public anger and frustration. We appreciate that thousands of people spent huge amounts of money to travel to South Africa and understandably feel very let down.
"We have a responsibility to put immediate and long term plans in place to give England a genuine chance of success in tournaments to come.
"We accept it is going to take time to rebuild the trust with the fans. It may be that the crowd for the Hungary game is low in comparison with other Wembley crowds. That’s understandable.
"However, we already know that our fans have proved themselves to be the best and most loyal supporters home and abroad in international football. We want to reward them with a winning team."
On behalf of the playing staff, Bevington also feels it is unfair to suggest an absence of passion for England.
He said: "While the players have as expected been heavily criticised for the performance in South Africa, I can say as someone who has worked closely with the team for over a decade that these players do care passionately.
"I was on the bus and around the dressing room ahead and after all our games in South Africa and on a dejected team coach after the Germany game.
"The players do care and carry the pain afterwards. This is shown in different ways, but it is there among them all. We all carry the burden of letting the nation down.
"They have great pride in representing their country and are fans themselves in their hearts. When they speak they do so with humility and passion. We want to help them engage with fans when on England duty."
Development of future players and coaches
One of the most important steps to improve our chances in the future will be the development of elite coaches and players, and though there are signs of progress like the U17s winning the European Championship in May, these kinds of improvements can take time to bear fruit.
Bevington added: "Sir Trevor [Brooking] is working very hard with his counterparts at the Premier League, Football League and all club academy directors to ensure we do develop, share and deliver a long-term plan.
"There is a genuine desire across the game to get this right. There is significant investment into youth development across our clubs and has been for the past decade - but there is no quick fix. With Sir Trevor, our General Secretary Alex Horne will consult widely and deliver their proposed path forward.
"Meanwhile Fabio will look to introduce the best of the younger players coming through into the senior set-up. I'm sure there will be changes, but Fabio must and will be left to make these decisions with his coaching staff - without any interference from The FA."
English coach
Capello's involvement in the improvement in the standard of coaching in England is also key to the strategy for the next two years, and that will involve an additional Pro Licence-qualified English coach joining Fabio's team, greater access to club managers and encouragement for our senior players to earn their coaching qualifications.
Bevington said: "While we have such an experienced manager as Fabio in charge, we need to draw on all of his experience for the benefit of our whole game over the next two years. We have a responsibility to ensure we do this.
"If we can increase the number of qualified English coaches and managers at the elite end of the game - to a comparable level to other major European nations - we are giving ourselves a far greater chance of achieving success in the future.
"A greater number of coaches and managers will hopefully ensure that English coaches will have greater opportunities to work for the big clubs in this country. We do already have excellent managers in the likes of Harry Redknapp, Roy Hodgson, Sam Allardyce, Steve Bruce and Steve McClaren to name but a few. We also have many more coming through the leagues, but we need more.
"St Georges Park (our national football centre) will be crucial to this, as it will be England’s university of football. The FA Learning Programme will be hugely significant as well."
On the specific point of a new English coach joining Fabio's backroom team, Bevington felt it important to clarify the situation after a weekend of speculation in the media.
"Fabio volunteered he wanted another English Coach to join his set-up when we met him last week," Bevington explained. "We were pleased to hear this as we want to introduce a wider pool of English coaches moving forward.
"Fabio was clear he didn't want us to offer names immediately, instead stressing he wanted more time to consider who it should be, then discuss it in more detail with Sir Trevor Brooking during the first week of August.
"Therefore, any speculation as to who it might be, cannot be made with any real conviction. Fabio hasn't offered his preference, we haven't said ours and no one has been approached. Any new coach is not being selected so they can automatically take over from Fabio in two years. Hopefully we will have a group of Englishman to consider at that time."
Capello's contract
The other issue subject to varying media reports over the past month has been Capello's contract and Bevington is keen to draw a line under it and move on.
"Fabio's original contract, which had a clause allowing either party to terminate for a short period after the World Cup, was not without financial penalty. If we had left the clause in, The FA would still have been liable for several million pounds. Without the clause, after negotiation, it would have been a similar figure. Therefore, the reason the original clause was removed was to show faith and commitment on both sides. So the decision to retain Fabio was not a financial one, it was based on football criteria alone.
"Those involved in talks and day to day work with Fabio were always resolute that he should remain manager for the full length of his contract and despite the extreme disappointment of the World Cup, that view has remained.
"The agreement to remove the clause was reached several weeks before the Inter Milan approach. All those involved in formalising the amended agreement the day the team travelled to South Africa were doing, was honouring what was previously agreed. Not to do so at that time would have caused major strain going into the tournament.
"We should also be clear we have not paid Fabio or his staff a penny more due to this amendment. The reason for the delay in confirming Fabio would continue in the role at the press conference the day after our exit, was because we wanted to ensure we considered things in a calm environment and went through a correct process with our main Board."
The Capello Index
And finally, on the most recent issue, Bevington repeated that the figures listed on the Capello Index have not had any input from the England Manager.
He said: "After the developments of the weekend this will not happen while Fabio is England manager.
"We have been consistent with this view, but managed sensitively. However, as has been made clear, Fabio had absolutely no involvement in the ratings that have appeared from the World Cup and did not give his name or approval to them."
Conclusion To address a great number of issues so soon after the World Cup is not a simple task, but Bevington is clear that everyone at The FA is committed to doing everything possible to improve England’s future, fully aware of the size of the challenge.
He concluded: “None of us are under any illusions that we are in for an easy time. There is a lot of hard work ahead, and we have to do all we can to put the building blocks in place for coach education and player development for the longer term future.
“We also must give Fabio and our development teams every level of support available to offer them the best platform to achieve now and in the immediate future.
“We can look at other nations, Spain currently being the optimum, and we must try to do develop more players of our own who have similar technique, mental alertness and passing ability, combined with goals to compete at the highest level.
“The work has already started.”
I am disgusted about the way the England team played in the world cup. Our England team is made up from about 7 premiership teams with only 3 english players from each club. This is no good for cohesion as the players are not used to playing with each other and ultimately they end up as a failure in these tournaments. look at teams like Spain where most of their players come from one club (Barcelona), look at Algeria, Slovenia, no wonder why there players played so well. I have a solution to this problem, which involves keeping the premiership foreign(even more foreign, bringing more money into the country) and actually having an extremely good and experienced England team. I have noticed that in the past there has been 22 teams in the premiership, at the moment there is only 20 English teams in the premiership. What I propose is that we add a 21st team into the premiership called " England" or something else, could be a club team name(anything) like wembley 1X etc, That only has ENGLISH players and promotes English football. These English players will be scouted up and down the country and will be the best young english players in the country. These players will be very cheap to mantain as they have come from lower leagues and because of their young age can easily be integrated into a team. They can play at Wembley or somewhere else against premiership clubs every week but will be exempt from relegation and only count as friendly games for the club teams. You are probally asking why don't we put them in the Championship or an alternative league? well we need this next generation of England players to play against some of the best players in the world ie in the premiership. Progressively as the seasons go on this team will get used to playing with each other because they will know how each other play and will be unstoppable at international level because the players at international level don't have time to gel. This will 1. Promote a good national side 2. Get the english players experienced against very good opposition (because the English players are playing against the foreign players) 3. Promote cohesion so the England players know each other very well and can play as a team. 4. More foreigners can play in the premiership which makes it more exciting because not so much pressure is put on getting English players which means more money for the FA. 5. The amount of money to be gained by the FA is vast because everyone in the country will support them, therefore the stadium will be packed and merchandise will be sold out. Shirts and clothes will be bought by virtually every1. 6. Make the premiership more interesting and get people who arn't interested in the premiership , because they don't have a club team in the premiership watch the premiership, because the next national side is in it. I have done a survey of 1532 people, 99.2% of people voted in favour of this idea, even foreign people agreed with it because they said it would make the premiership much more entertaining and they would have a new rival team. Its about time the FA did something. This way money wont be lost and infact gained and club teams wont be affected. I hope you take this seriously because the survey took a long time and took me about 6 months out of my time to compose. Alternatively you could make one whole existing team in the premiership english(not going to happen because the clubs will rebel and too much money is at stake), but I think this is a better idea or you could make the rule where every club has to have 6 english players starting, which every English club will oblige to anyway.
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By anonamous (18 months ago)- Well moderators all I will say now is that there should be an Enquiry on what went wrong , including all aspects accomodation , training , psychology of the players , Capello's techniques and methods , player selection ( in form players not taken , has beens + injured were) , tactics which every English supporter know have not worked employed again !!! All to make sure the FA don't make the same mistakes again , again ,again,and again !
I'll leave it at that because of the FA being offended !By kzwhitesclub (18 months ago)
- The Premiership has to a degree caused our demise. The teams in this top flight division all want instant success. Therefor their answer to this problem is to buy players from overseas. They think the other divisions have no players with talent.
If the FA has no power over the Premiership clubs then maybe our best course of action is to not include them into the England set up that is until they have an overseas player cap set in place.By anonymous (18 months ago)
- John Terry needs to go, his behaviour on and off the field has been a disgrace. His insubordination must be punished by dropping him completely he is not deserving of the England shirt. Hurry up and grow some nuts over at the FA, he has to go! By Adam (18 months ago)
- Why do England now think they are going to now improve matters for the national squad when things have got worse since 1966. It wont make a difference how many talented english managers are brought on as long as we allow all these foreign players to play in the premiership. They are taking the places away from our home grown talent. The only way england are going to beome a good size is if we severely reduce the number f foreign players playing for premiership clubs.
People say that we england currently have some good players. Well if they do why then are no foreign clubs interested in buying english players?By marcus (18 months ago)