Roy Hodgson has expressed his alarm at the number of foreign players in the Premier League.
With England’s qualification to next year’s World Cup in Brazil by no means assured, the national team’s manager claimed he was at a disadvantage compared to other foreign coaches when it came to selecting his squads.
“Quite a few of the games I go to do not have any English players,” he told Sky Sports News at an event organised by League Managers Association.
“So, one has to be very careful these days when talking about the Premier League and talking about the Englishness of it, because more than two thirds of the players in the league are not English.
“We have one of the lowest number of home-grown players to choose from in all the leagues, which, if you are national team manager, is not a great advantage, to be frank.”
His criticisms echo those of his assistant coach Gary Neville, who said last month that although foreign players had made Premier League football more attractive, the increasing level of imports was threatening to freeze out home-grown talent.
“In Spain you can have Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid and Lionel Messi at Barcelona, and they still have 63 per cent of their players are Spanish.
“There’s a tipping point and I think we’ve gone beyond it in England. We’re maybe 20 per cent off. We need to give more chances to our own. We’re harming ourselves a little bit.
“We can’t go back to having no foreign players. This leagues is better for having foreign players and coaches.
“Players like Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Paul Scholes would have stood out in any environment. But what about players like me? Players like my brother, Phil, or Nicky Butt?”
Hodgson’s predecessor as England coach, Fabio Capello, said that under his reign he wanted the percentage of English players starting Premier league matches to go from 34 per cent to nearer 40 per cent. His target was never achieved.
Meanwhile, Michael Carrick insists Sir Alex Ferguson has never told him to pull out of an England squad.
The Manchester United manager’s role in Rio Ferdinand’s controversial withdrawal from the squads for last month’s World Cup qualifiers with San Marino and Montenegro has come under scrutiny. It was claimed Ferguson put pressure on Ferdinand to pull out, believing it would jeopardise United’s hopes of reclaiming the Premier League title.
But Carrick said Ferguson had never pressurised members of the United squad to make themselves unavailable for international duty.
“I have never had anything from the manager saying pull yourself out or anything in that manner because it’s not in his nature,” Carrick said.