I agree with the small pitches remark. However we play football from a very young age too, and usually on streets etc..

I feel the whole youth system, mentality and ethic needs to change, in England, to get us to a world class technical level.

Eg. The best footballer at your school, I'm guessing he was a big lad too and used to use his strength and power to go past players.

And my bet is, he never made it.

How about a game, whereby the team who keeps the ball the longest, over 60 minutes, wins,. No goals.

You might start setting smaller kids, with good skill and technical ability start to come through.

We are just so reliant on physical attributes, even small players who do get through, usually excel in one area. Eg, pace

The Brazil example is more comparable to say someone like India. You might think India is cricket mad but in truth in most street corners the kids tend to prefer to play football.

The might not have the coaching or say ex great players to look up to but thus so far they have not produced one decent footballer.

What i'm trying to say is that if one thing works for one nation does not mean it will work in England.

I found when I was younger that generally when we look at a team, the best player was the one who could dribble round everyone if he wanted to. Trouble is he generally knows he's the best player on the pitch and doesn't think it's worth it to pass the ball to someone else.

We need to improve this idea of playing as a team rather than a bunch of individuals, which is what the England team has always looked liked recently.

I also think we're quite lacking in intelligence and imagination. A quick hoof up the pitch has been favoured from a young age instead of taking responsibility and looking to control the ball from the off, particularly when defending.

I went to Argentina last year and did some travelling about, one thing that struck me about the country from a footballing perspective was the passion. Everyone seemed to want to talk to you about football, Man City primarily because of the players and they seemed to love Tevez more than Aguero - weird. Anyway, I digress.

There are a huge number of pitches there, most in terrible condition but there always seemed to be kids of all ages playing together on them. It seemed like a community thing - you played football on the local pitch.

Personally I attribute this to a couple of things, firstly the relative affluence of England. Most kids have access to technology and would prefer to tweet, undate their status and play X-box than get out and play football. Putting it simply, todays generation would appear to prefer to play FIFA than to actually play football.

Secondly there is definitely a cultural difference. Winning is not everything, playing the game in a beautiful way counts in a way that we don't necessary appreciate. How often do you see fans and managers show pride in the fact they ground out a result or did a professional job? It's a generalisation sure but I just didn't get that sense in South America and that attitude, whether you think it right or wrong, will seep down and imbed itself in kids.

you do realise spain IS a european country OP

Its all to impress the Brazilian beauties on the beach

I agree that there should definitely be more emphasis on ball retention and maybe kids in this country have so many other distractions in the form of media.

Also I guess I was trying to suggest that Spain are breaking the mould in Europe but didn't really explain that very well and I was just listing shorter players who are skilful so may have merged the lines there a little, sorry.

Why does the England team of 1974 play in the same style of 2013 and the same for every nation? If nations play generationally in the same style then there is nothing we can do. Brazil, Germany, Italy will always do the best at tournaments. Spain have just toughened up.