As soon as England beat an inglorious retreat from yet another international tournament, there are calls for wholesale changes. This repetitive cry was particularly pronounced after the debacle of the exit from Euro 2016 at the hands of Iceland, whose football association, KSI, has a turnover of only £7m compared to the £318m the FA brought in last year.

Sam Allardyce has been installed as the England manager, but one of the fundamental problems for English football is the lack of a coherent and co-ordinated approach to grassroots football. English football has a long, tortured history of various factions working against each other. The Football League has been at loggerheads with the FA at varying degrees of intensity since the league was founded in 1888 and, more recently, the omnipotence of the Premier League has added to the internecine strife.

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Not only is there a new England manager but there has also been a change of guard at the top of the FA, with the outgoing chairman Greg Dyke being replaced by the former Football League chairman Greg Clarke. One of Clarke’s first tasks will be to appease sports minister Tracey Crouch, who says the FA need to reform to keep their government funding. “It is really important that public money goes into the grassroots of the game,” said Crouch earlier this summer. “I want to see continued investment in football but it has to be done in line with proper reforms at the top. I could not be more clear about how I want to see governing bodies perform. The FA gets between £30m and £40m of funding and that can go elsewhere. I’m not shy to say to the FA: ‘If you don’t reform your governance structures, I will give that money to other bodies that deliver football.’”

While football in England is led by organisations with different priorities – and Crouch has said she is “genuinely appalled” by how Premier League clubs invest their money – the symbiotic relationship between the DFB and Bundesliga clubs in Germany seems like a match made in heaven. That relationship helped bring about a renaissance in German football after their exit from the 1998 World Cup courtesy of a 3-0 thrashing by Croatia and a disastrous performance at Euro 2000. Not only did they suffer the debacle of failing to make it past the group stages at the Euros but they also lost to Kevin Keegan’s England side and, to cap it all, they finished bottom of their table with one point from three matches. These chastening experiences forced Germany to overhaul their system and that process was undoubtedly helped by the different football bodies pulling together in the same direction.

The Icelandic model also thrives on a unified approach, with the football authorities all prioritising three core aspects: coaching, facilities and strong links with schools. The provision of top quality facilities is a cornerstone of the KSI’s success and, considering the harsh conditions of Icelandic winters, this is a notable achievement. In contrast, the number of decent pitches available to young players in the UK has declined despite the £150m Parklife project, which was invested in the provision of 3G pitches spread around 30 city-based hubs. Participation in 11-a-side games fell behind small-sided versions of the game, such as five-a-side, quite a few years ago and the gap is growing. The Sport England Active People Survey confirmed: “Over the past five seasons in traditional 11-a-side football, the number of adult male teams playing affiliated football has dropped.”

However, the biggest difference between the UK and Iceland is probably in the provision of coaching for young players. Even some of the youngest age groups are instructed by highly qualified coaches in Iceland. From the age of four every child has a Uefa-accredited coach. From the under-10s age group upwards the coach has to hold a Uefa B qualification, a level that allows coaches in England to manage right up to professional clubs. Also, all coaches are paid in Iceland, which is in sharp contrast to the majority of English coaches, who tend to be volunteers and very few of them will be Uefa B qualified.

One of the crucial issues in developing a network of high-quality grassroots coaches in England is the cost of gaining the requisite badges. The fee varies from county to county but the average cost for Level 1 is £152, for Level 2 it is £320, while there is a significant hike to £720 for Uefa B and then again to £2,965 to take the Uefa A licence. So, a coach would have to invest over £4,000 to reach Uefa A status from scratch. This is why so many of the people who climb the coaching ladder seek financial support from their clubs.

Chris Earle, who was appointed as the Head of FA Education in July 2015 and who has the job of ensuring that there are enough qualified coaches in the country, points out that becoming a coach is as expensive in the other home nations. In Scotland the total cost is 25% more at over £5,000, but considering Scotland’s failure to qualify for the last eight consecutive tournaments that might not be the most beneficial of comparisons.

In Germany, a country that rarely struggles to qualify for tournaments and who are, after all, the World Cup holders, the Uefa A course fee is only €800. Football is utterly dominant in terms of participation in England but, as the director of Sport England, Phil Smith, suggests, simply having an appetite for the game is not going to bring success. “There is no shortage of football being played at youth level, with 96% of 10-year-old boys playing. There is a myth surrounding the connection between the number of players and elite performance – there is actually very little connection between the two.”

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The FA has been criticised in the past for concentrating on the qualifications and professional development of the coaches to the detriment of encouraging the players’ enjoyment of the game, particularly for the younger age groups. Earle insists that lessons have been learned. “I am pushing very hard to ensure our coaches are producing smiles through the grassroots game so that the kids develop a love of the ball, a love of the game and that they are engaged with football in a really positive way.”

Earle and his team have already re-launched the Level 1 and Level 2 coaching courses to reflect this renewed focus on enjoyment and will be tackling Uefa A and B and the Pro licences in due course. They have also conducted a review of how the coaches themselves were being tutored by a group of 500 who were employed by the FA, the results led to around half the tutors being released. “Our key aim is how we bring that fun element right to the forefront of what we are trying to do,” Earle says.

As well as getting the core philosophy right, it is equally important to have the sufficient number of qualified coaches. By the end of the 2016-17 season the FA has targeted having 25,000 Level 1 and 5,000 Level 2 newly qualified coaches, with the vast majority of these still coming from the voluntary sector. These are laudable aims and there is admirable work going on throughout English football but whether England will be able to perform to expectations – and maybe even beat Germany (or Iceland) at an international tournament – will ultimately rely on other factors. Whether it is the simply bringing down the cost of becoming a qualified coach or the more complex resolution of political differences at the top of the game, there is plenty of work to be done.

• This article is from the author of The Agony and the Ecstasy

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