I agree and seeing first hand what is happening at youth level fills me with no hope for the future either.

Our kids are being coerced with false pretences into club academies and development centres that do nothing apart from serve their own interest and try and mould robotic athletes. We had a 6 a side tournament on Saturday (one of 5/6 we do every summer when the season has finished), and we ended up in a penalty shootout semi (against our other under 10s), that was that good loads of other clubs / parents watched it. Akin to Euro 96, that semi eclipsed the final. You don't get that experience at academies.

The FA seem powerless or ignorant due to the money involved to stand up and have some balls. Only when players go the youth / amateur / semi pro route in their droves will we see a better England side along side with deeper investment into youth leagues (not academies) will we see an improvement - and at the current state of affairs that won't happen for another 50 years

Absolutely. Got one right now who's got to the latter stages of Arsenal. This year Chelsea, West Ham and the Gooners have come sniffing around the Southwest for some reason. I might have persuaded him & his parents that it's no good though (I hope for his sake). He's absolutely nowhere near good enough, strong enough, tall enough and worse his birthday is the latter end of the school year - we all know what Academies think of that lot! The majority of my U10s have been together for 3 years, they were cast offs from the other under 7s at the time, up until last year who were graced with academy players (who weren't allowed to play in the league this year). We've always been in their shadows but this season in particular we've hit a level playing field. They absolutely love their football, I would say this but we are an excellent club, well run & we do a lot of things that others don't do, we have an ethos that this is as real it gets for them so we try our hardest to enable them to 'live the dream'.

Academies make me sick, not just for the players and the dreams they destroy but how they suck the parents in. The more ex pros and Vardy et al keep coming out and bad mouthing them the better - because there's a general perception among adults that it's some kind of holy grail when nothing can be further than the truth.

The future of our game lies in well run grass roots football clubs and leagues. We need more people to step up and take up L1 & L2 coaching courses (which can be heavily subsidised or like our club we pay for it entirely). But almost as important is good pitch space, even in leafy Devon you wouldn't believe the battles we have to go through just to get space from the local Council. We've even offered to totally self manage a site but still they sit on their hands - all the while denying us the opportunity to develop and grow. While the FA need to take a good hard look at themselves so do local councils, if they give us the space - we've enough willing volunteers out there to make things work for the good of the game but ultimately the next generation of our society. And if we leave the EU that will be massively important in both respects.

I stand by my OP - this is the reason we are dismal as a national team. We need a EPL foreign player cap to rescue our national team. No more than 5 non Brits per team. It will never happen though because the EPL id practically a non UK owned business.