Olympic Games in 2012 did not produce a legacy of a healthy nation but investment at grassroots could take off after Russia

Cast off that final layer of scepticism, ignore the fear of jinx, forget the bruises of the past. It is time to think the delightfully thinkable.



As England’s footballers prepare for the epic final knockings of Russia 2018 there is already a feeling of wider forces at work, of spectating on a small but significant peg in the shared cultural history.

The players will return in glory whatever the bounce of the ball against a high-class but tiring Croatia. A semi-final is a spectacular achievement in itself. On the other hand we have the nuclear option. This England team is more than capable of winning two more matches from here and becoming unexpected but deliriously received world champions.

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At which point it is perhaps time to think a few slightly less thinkable things about victory and medals and what sport is ultimately for.

What would England winning the World Cup really mean? To use a classic press conference formula: what message would this send out? Or if you really want to know where this is going, what would it mean for England – the Fat Man of Europe; land of under-geared school sport and falling participation; but a place where professional football is brilliantly managed – to win the World Cup?

And yes, everyone knows this is not the moment for this, that it is instead the moment for cheers and beers in the air, for sucking the sweetness from the spectacle. As indeed we will. As a wise man once said, I’m happy for you, Imma let you finish.

But there is also a disjunct that will be felt by many. On one hand elite English football is as well-run and managed as it ever has been. The Premier League is a wonderful product. By the end of the week England could have world champions at senior, under-20 and under-17 level. The people responsible – the coaches, players, parents, those who have helped through the levels – are an inspiration.

But this is also a split sporting universe, a place where a World Cup win should not be seen as an end point or as proof of good health in all other areas.

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What is the value of a medal? It is a question familiar to anyone who has studied the last six years of Olympic “legacy”. Great Britain basically won the Olympics in 2012 and 2016. Look at the medal table. One anomalously small, quite unhealthy nation occupies second and third place, wedged in between the super states.

The athletes and coaches and funding bodies played this beautifully. Their medals are a profound achievement. But they have very little to do with the everyday sporting experience of the British people. Outsiders looking at “Team GB” in action might have thought, wow, this country really does have a wonderfully thrusting and healthy outdoor culture, so many people taking part, such a vibrant wealth of grassroots rowing and pommel-horsing.

In reality we are more than ever a nation of sedentary sofa-bound consumers. Take your pick of the culprits: lack of facilities, inactive parenting, selling-off of playing fields and the scandalous death of sport in state schools.

Either way there are fewer people participating in sport now than there were before the 2012 Games.

And get this: the UK is now the most obese nation in Western Europe. Twenty-eight per cent of children between two and 15 are overweight. Since 1990 there has been a 92% increase in obesity overall, a period that began, lest we forget, with the last time the nation was gripped with World Cup semi-final fever.

This is not football’s fault. Football does not drive bad diet and an indolent culture. Plus of course football is not the government, or Sport UK, or your parents. It is a business responsible only to its employees and shareholders.

And yet it isn’t, is it? Look at the happiness England’s success thus far has brought. Look at the energy here, the goodwill. This passion has been exploited brilliantly by football’s commercial arms. But it needs to be fed too.

For all its success as an entertainment product, fewer people are playing football now, down 19% in the last 10 years. The proportion of those aged 11-15 playing football has gone from 50% to 42% in the last six years. This is in part because of a lack of provision and funds: shrinking space, terrible drainage, laughably bad changing rooms.

But there is good news too. The Football Association is aware of this. The plan to sell Wembley to fund grassroots football is so wonderfully sensible it still inspires a double take, although it is vital this is done properly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sale of Wembley should raise money for grassroots football. Photograph: Marc Atkins/Offside/Getty Images

At the same time the women’s grassroots game is flourishing, or in other words taking up a shameful amount of slack. The Premier League is also stepping up, committed to doubling its grassroots investment to £100m a year. This trickle down will have some effect.

But what is striking is how entirely unrelated this is to the professional game. We have a distinct two-tier system here. The current England team reflects the successful Team GB methodology, with a similar set of processes to those used in elite rowing and cycling.

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Pluck out the right kind of malleable talent. Then create a kind of uber-culture with its own sealed space. Even Gareth Southgate’s selection reflects this. The players are athletic, young and intelligent. Nobody smokes or booze-binges. Nobody is a difficult physical type. Within this, England have sweated those dear old marginal gains, engineered a genuine team culture, become supremely well organised.

It is brilliant work, tribute to the skill and thoroughness of the manager. But it is a self-contained achievement, one that reflects also the culture of the Premier League academy system. This is a micromanaged world, with talented kids extracted as young as five and kept distinct, nourished and coached away from schools and clubs where habits are bad, pitches are poor, coaching dad-level.

The success of England’s junior teams suggests the academies are getting something seriously right. And good luck to them. But when it comes to World Cups and shared glory it is worth recognising this system is not an expression of national good health, some vital piece of municipal planning or political will. It has nothing to do with football your children will play, the access they will get to facilities, the camaraderie and pleasure and good health these things can bring.

This is not, for example, Iceland, where TV revenues went into building an all-weather pitch in every school and into the building of indoor arenas where local people get to use the same professional facilities, a genuine shared national success. For England, reaching a World Cup final would mark this year and this giddy, fun summer in the popular culture for ever. Probably we are already there with a semi-final. Hug your neighbour. Give thanks for Lord Gareth and his coat of the waist. But there is also a chance here to use all that energy and pride and unity in other ways.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest England’s players celebrate after winning their quarter-final with Sweden. Photograph: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images

There will be no shortage of people looking to borrow the glow of England’s success. Political capital will be sought. The value of the product will be boosted. Yet more money and interest will gush in. Does elite football really need a new car or a larger mansion?

How refreshing if some wider dividend could be reaped, with a little extra provision to help protect our green spaces, fit out our rundown parks, to cut ticket prices for younger fans to see these England players in the flesh, to rejuvenate the greybeard support.

Most of all, those in power could do something about school sport, reinserting it into the day, training PE teachers, giving the girls and boys inspired by seeing this on their television a nudge that they can get out there and do it too.

Recent history offers us a guide. Great Britain won the Olympics in 2012 and 2016, then lost them in the years that followed. With this World Cup England has a chance not just to win the war, but also the peace that follows.