England football legend, Alan Shearer at Aspire4Sport at Aspire Dome in Doha, yesterday. Shearer scored 30 goals in 62 appearances as well as scoring 34 goals to help Blackburn win the English Premier League title.
DOHA: Former Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer played down England’s chances of lifting the World Cup next summer but believes a quarter-final berth would be considered a success for the national team.
The 43-year-old striker who played for ‘The Three Lions’ between 1992 to 2000, before retiring from the sport in 2006, said financial matters as well as coaching has played a part in England’s decline on the international stage.
Speaking at a ‘Stars Chat’ session at Aspire4Sport in Doha yesterday, the all-time English Premier League goal-scorer said: “I think football has improved. Certainly in the Premier League it has improved. Where it hasn’t is that we are no nearer to England in winning a tournament. And the reasons for that is that we don’t have enough top class players in our team unlike other teams. We got to start not from scratch but we have to get better coaching to coach the kids to learn the life of a footballer.”
The former Southampton striker added: “It is for them to have the right attitude, the hunger and desire. The mentality and the financial type of things for the top end of the league are astronomical. The wages of the top players are incredible. Maybe that has played a small part in the decline of bringing youngsters through. If we put all that together, we are where we are. For me, I don’t expect we (England) will go to Brazil and win the World Cup. I think if we get to the quarter-finals, that will be a relative success.”
The retired football, who is now working as a television pundit in the United Kingdom, and in Doha said that coaching methods have changed since he practised the sport.
The striker whose 34 goals helped Blackburn Rovers win the English Premier League title in 1995 said: “We are not as technically good as the Spanish because that probably isn’t our fault. We were brought up to play in a certain way. When I was brought up as a kid, it was never pass, pass and pass. It was working about control, working on your technique. There were different things that you were taught. Now they are trying to bring coaches to try and work on your technique. I don’t think we can go to Brazil and win the World Cup because we are a few years behind the other nations.”
Shearer, who became the most expensive player in the world for £15m, when he completed a move from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United in 1996 and later became caretaker coach in 2009 for eight matches, said management in the game is now ‘more man management than ever before.’
He said: “Football man management is for now more man management than ever before. It’s probably more than 75 or 85 per cent of the job, and I’m pretty sure that all the managers will tell you that. You shouldn’t really have to motivate a top player. You should get to the top of the tree because of your hunger and your desire.”
He added: “That is why you have to admire Sir Alex Ferguson in what he achieved in his career. He started off where players wanted to stay at the highest level without the financial gain they have now. He’s gone through different eras and he’s had to coach players in whatever way they felt possible.”
He explained: “On the other hand, you got to respect the other guys in the lower league clubs or in the bottom of half of the Premier League because they have to manage players. If you have to manage a top club with huge financial backing, if the player doesn’t want to do what you want to do to him, you can just get rid of him like Manchester City did with Carlos Tevez. A manager at a lower level can’t do that because the chairman will scream at them in that we paid so much money for this guy, why is he not playing.”
Shearer also predicted Bayern Munich, now coached by Spaniard Pep Guardiola will make history by winning back-to-back European titles.
“Bayern Munich could be and in my opinion will be the first team to win back-to-back Champions League titles,” he said. THE PENINSULA/DP
