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As nights draw in at least we can look back on a glorious summer in which we humiliated the Germans.

At least we can bask in the knowledge that when it came to the defining test of sporting prowess our finest left Germany’s way behind. Let’s remind ourselves again of the European Athletics Championships’ final medals table: Britain: 12 golds and 23 medals; Germany 4 golds and 8 medals.

Which rather disproved the theory that’s been popular since the World Cup, that young Teutonic sports folk are super-humans programmed to reach dazzling heights, while ours are over-hyped donkeys who faint at the first taste of altitude.

There is a more scientific explanation. In 1998 the people running British athletics brought in a “no compromise” policy after years of under-achievement, pouring focussed money (with Lottery help) into its grass roots and coaching, ensuring that the finest young talents developed into world-class performers.

A couple of years later, after similar tournament failure, German football also ditched compromise. They established a uniform way of playing for all ages, invested heavily, and reached agreement with professional clubs that young, native talent would be fast-tracked into first teams.

English football on the other hand, despite winning the Lottery many times over, has embraced compromise with the vested interests inside it and the money men outside it, screwing grass roots, coaching, emerging talent and thus the national team, at every opportunity.

(Image: Stuart MacFarlane)

(And, yes, I know it was the whole of Britain competing in Zurich but take out Eilidh Child’s gold, Lynsey Sharp’s silver and Ashleigh Nelson and Chris O’Hare’s bronze, and the English still won more than twice as many medals as Germany.)

One small corner of English football refused to compromise though. Around the same time, Southampton embraced a similar model to German football and British athletics, which, if judged on talent development, has been equally successful.

We’re all familiar with Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and those who didn’t know about Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw found out last year.

One week into this season we’ve learned that Arsenal’s best player has not been Alexis Sanchez but Calum Chambers, and at Anfield a Southampton side shorn of its biggest stars deserved at least a draw thanks to stunning performances from Nathaniel Clyne and James Ward-Prowse.

Maybe this time next year we’ll have heard of Jake Sinclair, Omar Rowe, Matt Targett and Harrison Reed. Like all the above, products of a Southampton academy system, which during a round of international matches in March, provided England squads at different levels with 17 players.

At the time, Greg Dyke was overseeing a ten-man FA Commission working out how to develop and sustain English talent. Of those ten men only Glenn Hoddle had briefly worked at Southampton, some 14 years ago (although the FA have poached Matt Crocker from the Saints academy to work at St George’s Park.)

(Image: Getty)

When Dyke announced his conclusions, the highlight being a mooted B League somewhere above the Conference, Southampton’s Director of Football, Les Reed, described them as “laughable.”

Read more: What did Greg Dyke get right and wrong?

Reed’s logic being that Southampton pour massive resources into producing a conveyor belt of talent that equips young players to go straight into the Premier League, not some non-league below Division Two.

Which was the same logic in Germany which just won them the World Cup. Meanwhile the cream of academy talent at our biggest Premier League clubs continues to be farmed out on loan or falls by the wayside.

Roy Hodgson was partly right when he said last week that there isn’t a great deal of difference between German and English footballers.

The only difference, as recent events in Brazil and Zurich highlight, is that the system charged with moulding them into winners on the world stage is a lamentable shambles.

If those at the top want to find out how to compete with the Gods again maybe they should have a word with the Saints.