Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp thinks the current lack of good talented English youth players is not due to clubs not giving English players a go prefering to import them from abroard but the talent just isnt there. He blames modern culture where kids stay in playing games consoles and not outside playing football like kids of previous generations.
"I'm fed up with managers being made scapegoats for the state of our domestic game," he said in his column for The Sun.
"The English working class is turning its back on football - and that is not my fault.
"I do have a lot of foreign players at Portsmouth but believe me I'd love nothing more than to field a team of 11 so-called 'home-grown' lads born within the city limits.
"But it has become harder and harder to find enough kids of the kind of quality required to make the grade without buying an air ticket."
Redknapp added: "It may sound old and corny but when I was growing up, working class lads like me in the east end lived and breathed football.
"Now I rarely see a kickabout in the park. All I see are the dazzling lights of bedroom windows from the glare of TVs and computers. It seems football cannot compete with an X-Box."
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Read the complete post at http://www.talkpompey.co.uk/blogs/pompey_news/archive/2007/10/11/redknapp-blames-modern-culture-for-lack-of-english-talent.aspx