England's World Cup exit may have been some time ago, but the press are eager trying not to forget its lessons.
Governance is very much the mot du jour in football. The FA, apparently, do not have enough of it since the departure of noted dinner date fantasist Lord Triesman and this is worrying FIFA, who have plenty of it.
Suppose, however, the problem runs far deeper. Suppose that instead of it being a governance issue, it is a government issue, affecting not just football, but education.
Consider this. In Spain, the secondary school day is over at 2.20pm; in Germany a school day lasts from 8am to 1pm and includes at least alternate Saturdays; in Holland, school hours are flexible, amounting to roughly 30 hours each week, to include a 10-minute break each hour. A child could work two nine-hour days, two six-hour days and have three days off.
Do you see where this is heading? The three European nations involved in the World Cup semi-finals all have school hours that are more conducive to achieving excellence in sport, because greater free time can be given to coaching.
A good swimmer in Britain will rise at roughly the same hour as the milkman to make training before school. As for footballers, school starts before 9am and finishes close to 4pm here, so any specialist coaching can barely be scheduled before 6pm, by which time the child has already done a day's work. (Quite what we are teaching in these schools, considering every German and Dutch player speaks English fluently and some of ours do not, is another matter.)
What would happen if, instead of the easy answer to another England disappointment which involves giving Sir Dave Richards a kicking and advocating rules that contradict European Union employment law, we started our overview of England's failure in any number of sports with a look at school hours?
No chance. We play at reform, we tinker with change, we prefer internecine squabbling to action.
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