Without knocking Greg Dyke's FA Commission too much, the chances it becomes a talking shop from the outset are rather large.
The Commission's aim of England winning the World Cup in Qatar just can't be legislated for seven years off.
Some of those who'll win it for us are 13 and don't live in England yet!
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| The Golden Generation, hung, drawn & quarter-finalled |
Because just as much as this is about getting organized for a trophy push - it's also about what society may throw up in the next decade.
Yes, friends. As responsible as Premier League academies may prove, England will win the World Cup due to mass immigration to the UK. And what do Dyke, Danny Mills and Ritchie Humphreys know about that?
The acknowledgement from football's highest office that we've an England problem is positive, but pro-acting on the unknown and unforeseen is no solution.
No amount of Beckhams, Lampards and Terrys have propelled us to glory. I argue the Golden Generation were too English to succeed. Too conditioned by the Baddiel & Skinner zeitgeist, the Danny Baker colonization of football banter and other hangovers of persistent failure.
We'll win it with:
* talent unencumbered by generations of home-grown failure
* talent unbaked by the racket of tabloid sniping
* talent with a desire to do well for their adopted country ...
* talent beyond the radar
A new immigrant consensus will subvert the flatline of failure.
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| Can Greg get more England players to start Premier League games? |
There are families living on the twelfth floor in tower blocks, grateful of free education, hospital treatment and jobs. They won't be neighbours to the so-called benefit generation for long either.
Gael Bigirimana, the Burundi kid from Coventry, naive to barriers,
walked past the Sky Blues training ground one day, popped in and asked to play. He's now a Premier League midfielder at Newcastle United. His countryman, Saido Berahino already has England honours.
Romanians and Bulgarians have arrived in every major city looking for a new life unaffected by 48 years of hurt.
Belgium has a class of players from all corners of the world. Did the Brussels Howard Wilkinson sit down and construct this national team? If he did, it was entirely reactive, the private sector's built the careers of those individuals.
And what did Greece do apart from hire Otto Rehhagel?
I know what we did at Euro 2004: the FA brought WAG's, an army of blazers and an overpaid Swedish boss with the other eye on the FA's female staff. The Greeks won with a procession of one-nil wins.
Yes, I know these rough diamonds would require professional coaching from early teens, to be included in academies of the kind I've mentioned and to be known by the FA's Burton boys.
But it's what they carry with them in their upbringing that could break the spell for England.
It's essential that the FA Commission has a well-publicized set of objectives - and as importantly, no definitive timeline for delivery. Football, even society it feeds from, is changing too fast for fixed policies to be made in the here and now.
It would be best if the Commission acted more like a Prime Minister's Cabinet, meeting periodically and with each "minister" responsible for reporting back for a collective decision to be made.
Also that they are elected - or serve a term and can be replaced by another person from football - or beyond as needs must.
And it's vital they acknowledge England will win the World Cup, not by their initiatives - but by the individual enthusiasms of boys who started playing in the street - not in expensive replica kits.
