Firstly, its proven, its fact, in every single sport, every single work place, everywhere, you play or work with BETTER PEOPLE/players/accountants/anything you get better.
Take one english player, he trains with Dag and Red bridge, or Real Madrid, where will he become his best.
Reducing the quality of the EPL will never, ever, in a million years increase the quality of English players, every single piece of quantitative evidence proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt that English players would get worse if they train with and play against worse players week in week out.
Take Utd for example, the quality in the EPL has gone down drastically, Utd are the worst team ever to win a title, yet they still won it. You only have to be a tiny, miniscule amount better than the next best team to win. Quality of opposition decreases, quality of the champions decreases, thats what happens.
Remove 50% of the players in the league due to being foreign and every single player in the league will get worse.
As for England, biggest problem with the national team is never, in donkeys years, ever hiring a manager with INTERNATIONAL experience. Capello played in one of the worst Italian teams ever, who were widely ridiculed, and crumbled in the same way England did, coincidence? No, thats his experience, he doesn't know what makes a winning international team, why did Dunga, and Maradonna, with vastly inferior "managing" experience do far better? Because both have been part of successful international teams, they know what it takes, they know what players are needed, the mentality and the way to play.
England's quality of players coupled with either a vastly experienced international manager like Hiddink, or an ex player who has actually done well with an international team is the way forward.
In terms of training/youth/coaching this country is a joke, Soccer AM really shows how bad it is, the soccer skills school/competition, I forget what its called.
English kids thinks keepie uppies and tricks = great technical football, thats where we fail. We think the dutch/Spanish are great at technical football and think tricks are technical. Gerrard on Joe Cole , something along the lines of, "he's as good as Messi, what he can do in training, he can do things with a GOLF BALL that Messi can do with a football" sums it up for me, who cares what tricks he can do, under no pressure, with the wrong damn ball, his problem is in a match providing a useful cross or pass under pressure when it counts. Being able to catch the ball in your neck then hold it while you do a press up really doesn't come handy in a football match.
English kids and too many coaches, parents, think technical = tricks and Cruyff turns. Spain, Portugal, Holland, France think technical abilities mean, perfect tackling, perfect passing, good vision, good crossing, good dribbling.
For every one of Ronaldo's tricks, its the simple stuff he does better than almost everyone else. IF English players spent more time learning to be GOOD rather than FLASHY, we'd have much better English players on the whole, however our best 15-20 are a match for just about anyone in the world anyway. The likes of Messi are great footballers and would be realistically no matter where they were trained. England the team's problem is managerial, English players problems in general are training to be good at the wrong things.
