21st August, 2014
England manager Roy Hodgson has urged the country’s rising stars to consider spending some of their career abroad in a bid to gain the experience that will make them successful at international level.
This week saw Chelsea’s Josh McEachran agree a season-long loan with Dutch side Vitesse Arnhem — a club with close links to the London outfit — and Hodgson believes a clutch of young players would be better off playing overseas rather than kicking their heels at Premier League clubs.
“We are going to have to accept that some young players — who I think are good enough and can win games for England — will not always be first choice for their teams in England,” Hodgson told the Football Association’s website on Thursday.
“It wouldn’t hurt them at all to go abroad. Most of our players, although they don’t all play regularly — play at very good clubs at a very high level.”
Hodgson made his name as a manager with Swedish side Halmstads, before going on to take charge of clubs in several countries including Switzerland and Italy, as well as the Swiss and Finnish national sides.
He added: “If you are asking me would it be better for some of our players to be playing in good teams abroad rather than warming the bench, then of course as a national team manager I would like to see that.”
Goalkeeper Fraser Forster, now with Southampton but then with Celtic, was the only member of England’s final 23-man squad for the 2014 World Cup to be based outside the Premier League, with Hodgson’s men going out at the group stage in Brazil after failing to win a match.
David Beckham and Owen Hargreaves, who were then based at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively – were among the England squad picked for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
But Hodgson hoped the move by England Under-21 midfielder McEachran could persuade other players to follow suit.
“It is not my job to tell players what to do but I would think that, if the opening was there for players to go abroad, then a lot of them would take it.
“Chelsea have a lot of young players and they send them to Vitesse Arnhem. Manchester City have a lot of farm clubs.”
But Hodgson said he did not believe a quota system restricting the number of foreign players available to top-flight clubs would come into force.
“National team managers would welcome anything that would protect their players from foreign-player invasion but whether the Premier League or the Bundesliga will bring in rules that restrict foreigners then I’m not sure.”