It still is different however because reserve teams also comprise of players returning from injury and are getting back into fitness. I doubt they'd give it their all on the pitch which again brings up the question of quality and competitiveness.

There will be rules in place like in Spain that won't allow the reserve team to be promoted to the same league as the first team so that situation won't happen. And also players from the first team will not allowed to play for the reserve team to help them in the lower divisions. Players from the reserve team however are allowed to play for the first team.

And i think u might be overreacting if u think reserve teams can compete at the same level as in the Premier League. If they start right from the bottom they will find it very hard to even reach the Championship. But i agree that more respect should be shown to the smaller clubs and that's why i don't see this system being implemented in England. And revising and revamping the current reserve league is easy for u to say without suggesting anything concrete as to how one would go about doing it. Spain's system regardless whether it is suitable for England or not is a proven system so most of the points u have tried to make are moot imo.

The same thing can be said of Holland who have yet to win the World Cup despite churning out so many talented individuals. As it is, England have not had a decent left-winger since John Barnes... this coming from a nation with rich history where football is the no.1 sport. It can't be that everyone born in England is right-footed. Even now you see the likes of Phil Neville filling in at right-back with Carragher having to play on the left. It says that England is devoid of talent doesn't it? Spain may not have won anything but there are no shortage of players coming through the ranks there.

Countries like Holland and Portugal produce alot more talent than England do as well but u don't see them winning the major tournaments.
It's a decent suggestion but does it ensure that by doing that the quality is improved and not just doing it for numbers....

As of this time now Spain are the U-17 world champs...and u look at the current generation of Spanish players...saying England produces just as much as Spain in terms of talent is just being ignorant.

It's a decent suggestion but does it ensure that by doing that the quality is improved and not just doing it for numbers....

I'm sure you can also include a whole host of English left footed players plying their trade in the Championship. Question is "are they good enough"? Even if you play Baines, Taylor or Barry on the left flank, they are being played out of position and are just filling in for lack of a better option.

And the purpose of such a proposal is to ensure better development of the reserve players right? It is then related to youth development. Yes there are heaps of youth tournaments but they don't get to play against more seasoned veterans, hence the proposal for reserve teams to play in the league. Younger players then get the opportunity to play against hardened professionals at a competitive level. While I agree that this is perhaps not the best solution, it does have it's merits. It's all about ironing out the creases.

I'm baffled by this...what are England's options on the left wing? Joe Cole is right footed.  And Pernia, Del Horno and Antonio Lopez are Spain's current left backs. How many LBs do u need in a team?? Nice try pulling out "facts" out of your a**.

What does producing talent have to do with the senior national side? You need some experience in the national side...Besides Figo and Pauleta have retired...and i dunno about u but i would classify the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Quaresma as still young players. The players u named for England...how many of them are actually good enough in the international stage...so far only Lennon has impressed.
I agree with u that not all of them will be world class players but that ain't the issue here aint it.

We are talking about youngsters getting developed by playing quality opposition. How they turn out is a different issue.

And again Hugo Viana is a squad player in Valencia's first team...sure he may not have reached his potential but no 1 can doubt that he possesses good technique which is what u want to train into youngsters 1st.

We aren't talking about academies...we are talking about players who have come out of those academies and how they are continuing their development. As it is in England they play in the reserve leagues which some say isn't competitive enough. That's what this debate is about. That is the problem with the reserve system isnt it. I have since suggested that the English should continue doing what they have always done...send these players on loan and have a clause written to stipulate that these youngsters must play a minimum number of games or risk compensation. Duke Red is favouring a system similar to Spain's with some compromises.

I have no interest in Rafa's or Mourinho's intentions cause they are entitled to their opinion...but I would have liked for them to show more respect to the English culture
However your accusations that they don't want to release their youngsters is pretty absurd...they can always send them on loan as they have done so with some players already.

Ronaldinho is left sided although he is right footed...he's not a right sided player...don't confuse left sided with left footed...and isn't Messi left footed?

You say England produces alot of LB's but how many of them are really world class as u put it? Then i can also say every footballing country can produce alot of left backs...What's there to substantiate that England produces more leftbacks than Spain (or any country for that matter)?? I personally dunno where u get that from.

Aren't C Ronaldo, Quaresma, Moutinho, Miguel players u would consider good young talents who have proven themselves on the international stage? Why don't u tell me where England's talents are then?

I think some of them do...but most seem reluctant to gamble on youngsters...there's nothing more pissing off to me than a club getting a youngster on loan and then not playing him at all. This is why we are saying that the system needs to be improved.

The national team's troubles can be traced back to the formation of the Premier League and the resulting influx of foreign stars.

In June 1991, when the Football Association supported the plot by England's First Division clubs to break away from sharing money with those in the other three divisions, they promised it was to improve the England team. All in football knew the decision was really infested by politics: the big clubs were determined to keep the millions about to pour in from satellite television, while the FA wanted to smash the Football League to win a dreary administrative turf war of its own.

So the FA produced its Blueprint for the Future of Football, a flabby document obsessing about fans' disposable income, with one explosive recommendation at its core: that the top clubs should be allowed to have their separate Premier League.

"The prospects of success for the England Team would, at once, be enhanced," the blueprint proclaimed, although it never convincingly explained how.

The plan was that the First Division clubs would break free of the Football League and its century-old system of sharing money between large and small. The new Premier League would shrink to 18 clubs by 1996-97, allowing for fewer matches, fresher players and more time for international get-togethers. Improved, overhauled coaching would help power the England team to the top of the world.

English football's renaissance after Hillsborough had begun a year earlier, when England overcame a turgid start to gallop to the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, ultimately, undeservedly, going out to Germany on penalties.

Fifteen years on from the formation of the Premier League the 20 clubs - slimmed from 22 but never as far as 18 - are triumphant; bank accounts poised to accept the first slug of next year's barely believable £2.7bn TV deal. Several chairmen-owners who agitated originally for the breakaway have made millions by selling out to businessmen queuing up for a share of the game's global media revenues. On the field Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, all foreign-owned, crowd the last eight of the Champions League.

Yet internationally England have never matched that 1990 performance, achieved before the Premier League was formed supposedly to improve the team. The current players stumble about like strangers, denounced by a crowd scorning the money they make. For the superstars of the Premiership Andorra is a massive game.

The reasons for this are many, although we should not overstate the difference between the 1990 achievement and now: England reached the semi-final then only thanks to David Platt's injury-time volley against Belgium and two Gary Lineker penalties in the quarter final against Cameroon. In the two most recent major tournaments England have made it to the quarter-finals, only to go out on penalties. Perhaps a manager other than Steve McClaren would be wresting inspired, joined-up performances from today's team; perhaps not.

Last weekend Trevor Brooking, the FA's technical director, lamented that the English game lacks talent in depth, pointing out that, with no Ashley Cole, Wayne Bridge or Gary Neville, England had no recognised right- or left-back to play against Israel. He might also have noticed a hole where a creative midfielder ought to be, the lack - Stewart Downing apart - of a left-footed attacking midfield player and, with Michael Owen still injured, the absence of an internationally feared striker to play alongside the moody Wayne Rooney.

There is one clear reason for this shortage of players to choose from: the paucity of English footballers turning out at all in the Premiership. When the Premiership's "whole new ball game" kicked off in 1992-93, flush with the first TV deal, worth £305m, only 11 non-British players featured in all the clubs' starting line-ups. Of the first-choice players lining up for the four top clubs in the most recent Premiership matches a week and a half ago only 11 were English. Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick and Rooney started Manchester United's 4-1 win over Bolton; John Terry, Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Frank Lampard began Chelsea's 3-0 victory over Sheffield United; only Justin Hoyte started for Arsenal against Everton while in Liverpool's side that played Aston Villa only Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard were English.

After 1992, as the money grew, English clubs could pay to attract world stars; Jurgen Klinsmann, Gianfranco Zola and Juninho were among the first to fire the imagination and clubs began to compete to hunt overseas talent. Top players, such as Lampard, point out how much they have improved by playing alongside the world's greats but opportunities for the next generation of English players have become painfully limited. The link between the top division and the rest has been broken not only financially but in terms of players' careers. Those who came so close on the world stage in 1990 learned their craft gradually, gaining experience mostly in the lower divisions or even, as with Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle, in non-league football. Now Premier League clubs rarely take a chance on players from the Football League while the non-leagues - the odd DJ Campbell aside - are another country.

Top managers, releasing dozens of players every year who have come through their academies, grapple with sporting and financial stakes so high that they cannot afford to "blood" young players in the way they used to. The money is there to buy ready-made stars, the scouting extends for the most promising youngsters all over the world, so only truly outstanding English players at 16 have a hope of breaking through at the top clubs - and even then, as Theo Walcott is finding, games are limited.

In 1997, flush with the commercial success that followed the Premier League's launch, Howard Wilkinson produced his Charter for Quality, overhauling youth football in favour of the big clubs. Now crowds of boys from as young as eight are signed into clubs' academies, taken out of the school and youth teams that traditionally drilled English talent. For years teachers and youth coaches complained that the trawl is too wide and the coaching too uncertain to justify it - quite apart from the fact that at the same time the clubs have gone shopping for foreign players and so drastically reduced first-team opportunities for their own young graduates. The Premier League waved these objections away, although its head of youth development, Dave Richardson, did admit more recently that the clubs were not sure how to recruit the right players, or coach them, so young.

Now, 10 years on, a review is under way, in which the clubs' argue that they should be allowed to enlist boys from further afield, at younger ages, and not be restricted to local English players.

Contrary to the disingenuous rhetoric about the England team which ushered it in, the Premier League has undermined, rather than boosted, the FA's authority. Clubs are consumed by their own ambitions, not England's, and a period of European domination appears within reach now of those cosmopolitan squads. The England team, stocked with the few homegrown players to come through, and managed by one of only a handful of Englishmen even remotely qualified, comes round as an occasional embarrassment, raising a few difficult questions, all to be comfortably forgotten when Saturday comes.

Humble origins

None of the players in the England team that reached the World Cup semi-final in 1990 spent his formative years at the biggest clubs:

Peter Shilton Began career at Leicester City, 1966-74, including two seasons in the Second Division

Paul Parker Played at Fulham in the Second and Third Divisions, 1982-87, before joining QPR in the First

Stuart Pearce Played his first five seasons for non-league Wealdstone before joining Coventry in 1983

Des Walker Spent the first nine years of his career with Nottingham Forest

Terry Butcher Made his England debut in 1980 while at Ipswich

Mark Wright Played for Oxford before joining First Division Southampton in 1982

David Platt Played his first three seasons for Crewe in the Fourth Division

Chris Waddle Played for Tow Law Town in the Northern League before Newcastle signed him in 1980

Paul Gascoigne Came through at Newcastle United in 1985, then struggling to stay in the First Division

Peter Beardsley Began league career at Carlisle in Third Division, 1979-82

Gary Lineker Made his first 214 appearances for Leicester, 1978-85

Yeah...and the only left footed winger in the current England squad is Downing...but that doesn't mean England are devoid of traditional left wingers

About 15 out of the 20 La Liga teams are using Spanish LBs...you only got that impression because you are comparing the top sides: Barca, Real and Sevilla to all the EPL clubs. Again..apples and oranges. How many top class English LB's do the top 4 EPL sides have? Ashley Cole is about it...Besides when u state that England produces more LBs u have to take in account the whole country not just the top 20 teams imo. There's still nothing to back your claim thr,

Miguel is 27 already my mistake...And just because C Ronaldo has alot of experience still doesn't make him any less a young player. Who does England have that is comparable to Ronaldo at his age?

How do u know they are good enough to play for England if they havent even got their first senior cap? It's still up in the air for me...