England’s disappointment is mixed with anger and suspicion. Its bid was regarded by many as the most technically complete. Unlike its rival nations (joint bids between Holland/Belgium and Spain/Portugal were contenders along with Russia) it had all the stadiums and facilities needed to host the tournament tomorrow. The English presentation at Zurich—fronted by the trio of Prince William, David Beckham, and another David (Cameron) who merely serves as the country’s prime minister—was also the most acclaimed.
To have failed to win the right to host the World Cup was bad enough; to have been eliminated in the first round of voting has aroused suspicion, even among those who were indifferent to the result, that there were hidden agendas at play. The English media have pointed at alleged corruption in Fifa in recent months. There is a fear that today’s humiliating last-place finish was an act of retribution by at least some of the 22 officials who made up the voting panel.
However, the ill-feeling should be balanced by two consoling thoughts. Firstly, there was a strong case for both Russia and Qatar. The technical quality of a bid is not all that matters. Another major question considered by the panel is whether a country would see its football culture and infrastructure enhanced by hosting a World Cup. Although football is already an empire on which the sun never sets, Fifa wants to expand it further. A World Cup cannot make the game much more popular in England or Iberia than it already is; neither do these old powers need a tournament to leave a legacy of new stadiums. Russia, where football is popular but not all-conquering in the way it is in western Europe, and Qatar, which has little football tradition at all, are relatively virgin territories.
The second reason is more pertinent for England. The country has allowed itself to become more preoccupied with hosting major sporting events than with winning them. Remember, England’s record in international football is, given its population, wealth and mania for the game, dismal. It has reached the final of either the World Cup or the European Championships once (in 1966, when it had home advantage). Italy, with roughly the same population, has won four World Cups and been runner-up in a few more. Argentina, with a much smaller population and less money, has two World Cups. Holland, with one quarter of the population, has never won a World Cup but has reached three finals and won the European Championship. Germany has a bigger population than England but not by enough of a margin to explain its crushingly superior record of tournaments won and finals reached.
The reason for England’s under-achievement is that it lacks the grassroots infrastructure to develop skillful young players. According to statistics unearthed by the Guardian before England’s abysmal showing at last summer’s World Cup, the country has 2,679 coaches who hold either the ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘Pro’ coaching licenses recognized by Europe’s governing body, UEFA. How many does Spain have? 23,995. Italy? 29,420. Germany? 34,970. And whereas the best English coaches are busy training professional footballers and late-teenagers about to reach that level, European coaching talent is deployed where it really makes a difference—on children between the ages of 5 and 14, after which age a player’s basic technical ability is hard to improve. This Jesuit-like focus on very young players can sometimes be unsettling (a New York Times feature earlier this year on the Ajax academy in Holland described how coaches would refer to their charges by their year of birth, so that a six year old is "a 2004") but it works.
Horror stories of the misguided coaching of English youngsters have been around for decades: skillful but small children being sidelined in favour of guileless brutes, 8 year olds being allowed to play matches on full-sized pitches where they will spend more time running than touching the ball, a hectoring intolerance of risk-taking flair. As The Economist wrote three years ago, many English youngsters are considered “damaged goods” by the time they enter professional academies. Coaches bemoan the "skills gap" with continental or Latin American youngsters.
France overhauled its youth system by building the famous Clairefontaine academy in the 1980s, and went on win the World Cup and European Championships consecutively, after years of failure. Spain did the same, with the same spectacular results. Germany’s recent resurgence after a brief fallow period can be traced to two reforms: the loosening of naturalization laws that allowed talented young players from Turkish, African and other immigrant backgrounds to play for Germany, and, yes, a radical overhaul of the country youth-development system. Countries such as Brazil and Argentina, whose success is sometimes sweetly attributed by the English to some kind of natural Latin gift, have extraordinarily sophisticated youth-coaching systems.
England has always seemed vaguely aware of this problem without ever feeling compelled to act upon it. Almost a decade ago, the English Football Association mooted the idea of building its own version of the Clairefontaine academy in Burton upon Trent. It chose to sink the money into a new Wembley stadium instead. As a result, England now has a palatial home for a mediocre team. Choosing to make a priority of hosting the World Cup rather than creating a pool of talent that could win it was another act of profound myopia. There is no guarantee that the failure of the 2018 bid will get England to focus on what matters (although the Burton academy is, finally, starting to take shape). But it at least gets rid of a distraction.