A dearth of top-flight opportunities for young English talent should not be used an excuse for the country\u2019s recent woes on the international stage, according to Kevin Keegan.<\/p>\n
England have suffered a catalogue of failures at major tournaments, most recently exiting in the group stage of the 2014 World Cup and to Iceland at Euro 2016.<\/p>\n
Though Gareth Southgate\u2019s side qualified for next year\u2019s finals in Russia with a 1-0 victory over Slovenia on Thursday, the nature of the performance, and many of those that went before it during the campaign, provoked trepidation rather than excitement about England\u2019s prospects next year.<\/p>\n
Much has been made of the relative lack of world class players available to Southgate and his predecessors but Keegan, who managed England at the 2000 European Championship but quit shortly afterwards, says the influx of overseas players should not be blamed for stifling home-grown talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult with young players,\u201d Keegan said at a global summit in London hosted by Qatar\u2019s Aspire Academy on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a terrible feeling in England that the young players are not being given a chance. But I think the truth is they are not good enough at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to look at themselves and say \u2018why can\u2019t I get into the first team? Why are they bringing players from Argentina, Uruguay and Spain, Serbia?\u201d<\/p>\n
Keegan said managers should also be willing to play young players \u2014 saying the best way for them to become top internationals is to learn from experienced players around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to be good enough to start with, but if they are there is only so much coaching you can do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t forget the value of looking and learning from an experienced player. The best way for them to learn and improve is by looking at the dedication of the top players, the way they train and you find the key. It\u2019s not luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a young player at Liverpool I learned so much from Tommy Smith, Emlyn Hughes and Ian Callaghan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A dearth of top-flight opportunities for young English talent should not be used an excuse for the country\u2019s recent woes on the international stage, according to Kevin Keegan. England have suffered a catalogue of failures at major tournaments, most recently exiting in the group stage of the 2014 World Cup and to Iceland at Euro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7026,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024\/revisions\/7026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}