http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2703
by Karl Baxter
Visitors to Caste Football will be no strangers to the fact that sport is strongly linked to political and economic issues. Here in Europe, too, there is growing consciousness of how economic forces and connected political agendas have been undermining the vital role that sport has always played in national culture and identity.
Nothing has made this clearer than the continuing decline of England’s national http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=776 team at a time when the English club game has become by far the biggest in the world in terms of salaries and revenues. It now generates around $3 billion a year.
This decline was underlined by the English national team’s failure to qualify for the finals of the UEFA European Football Championship, to be held this year in Austria and Switzerland. While all the other major soccer nations of Europe will be among the 16 finalists, including a French national team that was humbled by home and away defeats to a resurgent Scotland, England, the country recognized as the birthplace of soccer will be absent.Of course, England has had bad results in the past and occasionally failed to qualify for major tournaments. But what makes this different are two factors. First, the failure to qualify is now being seen as part of a long-term decline of the national soccer team and the level of indigenous talent, and, second, commentators and people at the top level in the game are now starting to link this decline with the economic growth and increasing globalization of England’s top Premier League, which has seen major English club sides increasingly relying on imported talent. Indigenous English players now make up just over 30% of the players.
http://www.castefootball.us/viewarticle.asp?sportID=8&teamID=0&ID=23264