A few more years of hurt...

Failure by England. Again. But not even at the tournament this time.

As Mr Creegan pointed out to me earlier, this could be the wake up call English football needed and that hopefully it'll go the same way as France, after their failure to qualify for Euro96.

Here are my thoughts...

By my reckoning only 2 of the 14 who played tonight are regulars for one of the much vaunted top 4. The rest either only play a handful of games for those teams or play for a team who's season's goal is to avoid relegation.

Granted there are a few missing (Neville, Rooney, Ferdinand, Terry) but it just highlights the lack of depth. There are far too many foreigners playing and coaching in the Premiership and it is affecting the national side. Who was the last Englishman to manage a title winning side? Howard Wilkinson, the season before the premiership started.

Until something is done about this the England team will never get anywhere.

Take Italy as a good example - I believe they have around 70% Italian players in their top flight teams. And the majority of top teams have recently had Italian coaches... Lippi, Anceloti, Mancini, Trapatoni. They won the World Cup. I've nothing against quality foreign players in the premiership, there have been plenty over the years who've vastly improved the standard of football in England. But it's getting ridiculous when the majority of every starting side is foreign.

Another question I have about English football is why don't any of the top players play overseas? In this day and age where the world has never been closer together (except billions of years ago when it actually was physically closer), and where players could easily afford private flights and helicopters to get home to their mums for tea, why does not one English player play for a decent European side.

Same goes for the coaches... Our two most successful English coaches in recent times, Bobby Robson and Terry Venereables, both coached at the highest level in Europe.

McLaren has to go. The FA felt they had to appoint an Englishman after the failure of a foreigner, which I agreed with. Even though there was no particularly obvious candidate. But now it's almost certain we'll be back to an overseas search.

If it were up to me (and I'm normally the last to advocate a foreigh coach), it has to be someone who's coached in England with success. Which pretty much leaves only one candidate.... Jose Mourinho.