With a week off from the usual Aston Villa hi-jinx, well football, I figured it best to use my Sunday column to look at something different, and with the international break having interrupted our otherwise promising revolution, it seemed the best target to be getting at.

As I half heartedly watched the England vs Moldova game, I started thinking about how the international scene has changed somewhat, specifically in this country. Many fans, including those who comment on this blog, have started to become largely ambivalent about today’s international game. Whilst the international fixture list can sometimes be lambasted for placing meaningless friendlies in the middle of an already congested domestic fixture list, the Moldova game should have had more interest around it because it was a World Cup qualifier, even if England’s rivals were the proverbial “boys” against the national team’s “men”.

For those of us who pay attention to the English national team – most likely almost everyone who reads this blog – there has been a change of heart amongst fans in other ways, ways that one could argue are positive and better for the resetting of expectations.

Just like Villa, England have won nothing of note for a long time, a proud World Cup win in 1966 an isolated high point in an otherwise mediocre history. England can be proud of their creation and founding of football as a sport – if you want to adopt the traditional belief rather than one that suggests a bastardised version was being played in China thousands of years ago – but creating a game is not otherwise synonymous with being successful at it.

This deviates from my point a little as whilst I could write a massive tome on England’s lack of successes, I specifically wanted to look at was the belief that the game is dead internationally, or rather that supporters’ love for the national game is diminishing in England.

Filthy Lucre – The Tarnish On The English Game?

Part of this is down to the abundance of money being pumped into the system. England’s top tier domestic league, undoubtedly the richest in the world in footballing terms, but certainly far from the most skilful, has issues with motivation. Selection for the national team, once seen as the pinnacle for many a young man’s career, is now treated with disdain by a multitude of players. Would we, for example, have envisaged players in the era of Gordon Banks, or even in comparatively recent times Gary Lineker, shunning their chance to stay in the national team?

Would we see men in their twenties and thirties announcing their international “retirement” from the game seemingly to make more of a statement about their beliefs than it may have about their abilities? I doubt it, and part of this comes down to money.

Back in the pre-Premier League era, there was more to playing for England than just the obvious reward of recognition and international caps. Back in a-time-many-seem-to-have-forgotten, playing for your country brought financial rewards when, comparatively speaking, domestic wages were nowhere near as inflated.

Nowadays, whilst the actions of England’s players to donate match fees to charity is a positively viewed idea, the fact that the hunger to play for the team – whether for financial or recognition purposes – is diminished is something that prompts further analysis.

At the European Championships, England’s team appeared somewhat free from the shackles of generations’ look at the 1966 World Cup as some sort of “true” indicator of England’s abilities and not, as many rationalists might say, a fortunate coming together of events. Here was an England team playing without those hyped beliefs – briefly at least until the media pumped in “pride” after progressing from the group stage – though said lack of hope also causes the same ambivalence that strikes the overpaid footballer, albeit for differing reasons.

Is fans lack of interest in England’s fortunes a realisation that, after all this hype, the team simply isn’t that good? That chances of England winning a major tournament may not happen in my lifetime, never mind the lifetime of my parents?

Perhaps such an admittance would go some way to explaining just why the nation as a whole have turned off from football, a marked contrast to the somewhat unexpected national pride that has spawned out of Great Britain’s success at the Olympics and Paralympics.

If A Team Doesn’t Ever Win, Should Fans Support Them?

Should fans only pay interest when they win though? The international scene is, in many ways, dissimilar to a domestic league with no defined leagues per se barring the often-nonsensical FIFA rankings. Similarly, the international scene, specifically that of European football in this instance, has few prizes that can be won. In a regional competition that pits 32 teams against each other Europe can have, at best, two trophy wins in four years, and that is assuming a European team wins the World Cup.

Of course, much of the fact that competitions run on a four yearly format is down to UEFA & FIFA choices, but the lack of many teams winning anything does serve to illustrate that, even on a best case scenario, only two teams can win anything at all.

Which is why, in a sense, it might make sense as to why the international scene is dead and boring for many. Villa may not have won anything of note in over a decade, three decades if we are to ignore the League Cup, but there is a prestige associated with our Premier League ever-presence, something that isn’t as easily reflected in that of the international scene particular when FIFA rankings often bear no resemblance to true performance.

Beyond this, the question must be asked of you – the fans – as to why you feel international football is or isn’t of any interest to you nowadays? American readers may well speak highly of their pride in the USMNT compared to the glaring ambivalence of many English readers when viewing their own countries somewhat desolate history. The Americans at least have a sense of historic perspective and are on an upward curve as a national team, whilst England fans’ perspective realignment means they are on a downward spiral into major apathy.

What do you think though? Make your thoughts known in the comments below.

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