Skills gap

摘要

For a nation that invented the sport, the British are not much good at football. England may be home to the Premier League, perhaps the best club competition in the world, but half of the players fielded on any given weekend are neither British nor Irish. In a recent round of the Champions League, which pits 32 top teams across Europe against each other, there were barely ten English players, compared with more than 50 Brazilians and some 30 players each from France, Italy and Spain. There were also more Argentines, Germans, Romanians, Turks, Czechs, Serbs and Dutchmen.