Two English premier league clubs have made it to the final of the Champions League this year. There were three English teams in the semi-finals. This happened last year too, but in the end it was an Italian club, Milan, who were crowned European champions. This time, the English teams went one better, as the only other non-English club in the last four, Barcelona, was eliminated.

This has happened at a time when the English national side is not doing well at all, so much so that England did not qualify for the Euro 2008 finals that will start next month.

Why is this happening – the answer is simple. The basis of the top English clubs is not made up of English players, but of foreigners. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and, to a lesser extent, Manchester United are all teams that are largely made up of foreign players. There have been occasions when Arsenal, for example, fielded 11 foreign players in their starting line-up.

This begs the question – are English clubs doing enough in their nurseries to raise players of quality? The answer is no. England was the cradle of football, but English clubs are no longer capable of producing valuable English players. The last such star was David Beckham.

One of the reasons for this is that there are few good coaches in England. Suffice it to say that the top four clubs are not coached by Englishmen – Avram Grant, Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Rafael Benitez are all foreigners. And there are other foreign coaches in the English premier league too. That there is a crisis of coaches can also be seen from the fact that after the negative experience of Steve McClaren, under whose guidance England failed in their Euro 2008 campaign, they have appointed an Italian coach, Fabio Capello, to take care of the national side.

England needs to produce high quality home-grown coaches, to groom the thousands of young boys at their nurseries. It is only when English clubs have good coaches within their nurseries that they will be able to produce quality players. Until then, they will have to make do by allowing foreign players and coaches to take so-called English clubs to the top places in Europe.

Michael Caruana

Naxxar