Press A and F1 together for failure

When England fail to qualify for the 2022 World Cup finals – and they will – the finger of culpability should not be pointed at the manager.

The blame will rest squarely with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

Instead of being outside playing football or watching Match of the Day and learning how things should be done, today’s teenage boys are beating each other over the net on FIFA 2010 or killing each other on Call of Duty – on their choice of Playstation3, Xbox, or Wii.

When I was 11 and watching every possible second of the 1974 World Cup finals from Germany, the great Johann Cruyff produced THAT turn in one of the games. Within minutes dozens of kids from our neighbourhood were out in the street attempting it.

One or two managed to perfect it – modesty prevents me from naming names – and it became part of their armoury (although as a keeper I seldom had a chance to use it).

When Jimmy Hill started to produce tactical match analysis on MotD I took it all in; I couldn’t get enough. I had a voracious appetite – and those who know me will confirm I still do, though more for onion bhajis than tactics nowadays.

Listening to people like Hill, the great Don Howe and Brian Clough pontificating on TV as to why team A failed to match team B’s formation, or how the central defensive partnership of team C was let down by its midfield, fascinated me.

I didn’t get to play at a particularly high level so this – and reading about it – was how I grasped the concept of tactics, positional play and the infamous Position Of Maximum Opportunity, as espoused by the equally infamous Charles Hughes – look him up kids!

I understood how John Beck’s theory worked and marvelled at the ‘Total Football’ – or tactical naïveté, the choice is yours – of the Dutch masters of the mid-70s.

But today, kids don’t give a glance to the analysis of Messrs Hansen and Lawrenson and then wonder on a Sunday morning why they’re being asked why they were drawn out of position or failed to pick up the midfield runner.

However, if you asked them ‘which combination of buttons do you need to press to assign man-marking duties to a player on the Xbox version of FIFA?’ they’d know in a flash.

Somehow I think their sporting priorities are wrong.