Oh no, the foreigners are ruining our chances again

As a child that grew up in the UK in the 70s I saw much of the industrial strife driven by Red Robbo and his band of merry men (motto; If it works once make sure that never happens again). And of course they would be very merry men (no women allowed anywhere near the factory floor) because they never worked for more than one or two hours a day. And they never worked more than one or two hours because they would then need to go on strike.

And what were they striking about?

In large part they were in fear of overseas competition.

Competition that was creating things people wanted to buy, things that didn’t break down the minute you got it out of the showroom, things that looked good. Red Robbo was meanwhile creating a boom in tea, braziers and placards. And on the rare occasion that the factory actually opened Robbo and his fellow ‘workers’ delivered the Austin Marina or Princess. Cars so legendarily bad that even now nearly 30 years later Top Gear still drop pianos on them and use the Marina as a running joke throughout their series.

If you have the stomach for it you can watch how British Leyland tried to sell them

Which brings me to football. At the moment the England football team is about as useless as a chocolate teapot. And very many football luminaries and legends are being trotted out to opine on what should be done. We invented the beautiful game gave it to the world and like so many things before Johnny Foreigner has just gone and ruined it all by being better at it and beating us hollow. I even get nervous now when England play San Marino – with no offense due to San Marino.

So what’s to be done. We’ll one of the ideas being considered is to limit the number of foreigners playing in the English Premier League. Those pesky foreigners come over here steal our jobs and just do things better than us. So if we stop them coming all will be solved. Hmmm

I suspect we will end up with the footballing equivalent of the Marina. And how exactly is that going to make us world beaters again?

Perhaps if we learned why overseas players are so good we might have a chance of making ourselves better. Maybe if we trained in ways that foreign players do, played games in the way they do, and recreated some of their approaches to health and well being then maybe we would stand a chance.

Or of course we could just go on strike. And going on strike did achieve one positive thing for the UK. It killed our home grown motor industry finally. And saved us from a successor to the Austin Marina.