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The FA is beginning to show the worst signs of a bureaucracy, if it wasn't so serious it would be laughable.

Patrick Barclay on the state of the national team
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• England

As we know, Euro 2008 gets underway in a few weeks without England.

England's failure to qualify for Austria-Switzerland prompted the appointment of Fabio Capello and last week the FA spelt out their future plans for the national team at a presentation at Wembley.

Ian Ridley of the Mail on Sunday was at the presentation and he believes that Capello has a huge job on his hands to get England to the World Cup and to at least a semi-final finish.

"Big job isn't it, to get England to the next World Cup finals and be regarded as a success.

"In 2001 we were having a strategic vision by the FA of which this golden generation of players were going to win us the World Cup in 2006.

"Here we are seven years later just hoping to qualify! We've gone backwards there's no doubt about that.

"This vision was nice and glossy, some of us were part of the process, we were invited along to give our opinions on the state of English football at a lunch by the consultancy company, Genesis.

"They ripped off all our ideas for a cheap lunch! And they've come up with this glossy document that is a lot of marketing speak, a lot of smoke and mirrors and basically it comes down to two personalities.

"There is going to be a chief operating officer who will work with Brian Barwick, but most importantly a performance director who will be a technical director.

"The big thing is Capello and whether he is able to deliver. It's not a big ask is it, lets be honest about this."

Laughable

The Sunday Times' Patrick Barclay was incandescent at the FA, for a number of things.

Barclay said: "The FA is beginning to show the worst signs of a bureaucracy.

"If it wasn't so serious, if the money that fans and television companies contribute to football wasn't so important in terms of generating the game, making people play football - which is what this whole industry is founded for - if it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable.

"Why on Earth do we need a chief operating officer, whatever that is, underneath Brian Barwick, who is paid £500,000 a year or something, I just do not know.

"Why on Earth do we need a performance director when we have a very good director of football development in Sir Trevor Brooking? This is an absolute farce.

"Meanwhile a (consultancy) company comes in to produce a target that a child couldn't miss - to qualify for the next World Cup from a group including outer Mongolia!

"It's absolute nonsense, on top of the £25 million we will waste on this Italian team of managers over the next few years. If they're not good enough to do it we may as well give up."