Club vs. Country: Why England's National Football Team Is Turn-off for the Fans

I prefer my club over my country.

Yes, I am proud to be English (proud to be British, too, but that's a different article all together), and yes, I do support the England national team. But if it comes down to it, like many other fans and maybe some of the players, I would choose club over country.

There are several reasons why I came to this decision. First, my club means more to me than my national team. If you go by the logic that you support a national team because it is where you are from or you have a family or personal tie to that country, then the same logic should in theory apply to your club team.

I know in this day and age this isn't the case anymore. I live in Oxford, and every home Manchester United match there is a coach that goes from Oxford to Old Trafford full of season-ticket holders. I know people are free to choose the football club of their choice, but wouldn't a local club like Oxford United would love to have those 70-odd fans at all of their home games instead?

I support Newcastle United. Any of you that know your British geography will know that this is nowhere near my local club. I am not a Geordie, I am not from Newcastle, but my mother's family is from that area, they all support Newcastle, and so do I. I have been accused of being a 'glory-hunter' but anyone that knows Newcastle's recent history will tell you that is an impossible tag to have.

So why are fans put off by the England side? Recent history of England has not been kind. After a decent but disappointing 2006 World Cup, there was the failure to qualify for Euro 2008, and the promise of a good qualifying campaign leading to the shocking display at South Africa 2010.

Who is to blame for this? The players? The manager? The lack of winter break? Everyone has their own theories, but there is no one single answer.

Could it be that the fans are just fed up with the over-hyped England team? We are constantly being told these are the best players in the world playing in the best league in the world. They earn in a week what some of use won't even earn in 10 years of work. Sometimes they don't even look like they want to be there.

At times during the World Cup, they looked like 11 strangers thrown together to play as a football team, which they were doing instead of lying on a beach like they would have liked.

How many times have you seen a player 'injured' at the start of an international break, but when the league campaign restarts a week later they're running around like a man reborn? 

It used to be that when your team played another international team, it was a special occasion when you got to experience all the exoticism of a foreign team, players, and playing methods that you rarely saw before. Now, in our modern technological age, we can just watch these foreign wizards on satellite TV or the Internet.

Some people will point the blame at manager Fabio Capello. Maybe he is part of the issue, but not all of it. History has proven that he is a good manager, but maybe it's hard for him to motivate his players on a cold Tuesday night in eastern Europe when they'd rather be falling out of nightclubs in central London.

The only criticism I have of Capello is that sometimes his squad selections are bad. He started off well, picking players that were in form for the England squad. And to a degree he still does, but can anyone support the idea of taking a player like Emile Heskey to the World Cup last year? A good player, yes, but a proven goal-scorer at the international level? No.

Maybe it's contradictions like taking the captaincy away from John Terry on moral grounds, only to give it back to him less than a year later. Maybe it's because the young promising players are only given sporadic chances to shine whilst the more senior players take center stage. This was one of the criticisms of Capello during South Africa 2010, and which he is gradually addressing.

Because the fans' club teams provide them with all their footballing needs, and they feel a greater sense of belonging there, for the time being at least I think the clubs will come before country.