As the Football Foundation celebrates ten years of investment in England's future stars, things are from perfect:
England’s public football facilities are still severely lagging behind its European rivals despite a decade of multimillion-pound investment. In 2000 the Premier League pledged five per cent of its annual domestic TV rights deal to pay for better community facilities. Matched by handouts from the FA and the government, the Football Foundation was set up to distribute the money – but ten years on the spending has only scratched the surface.
‘Our community sports facilities have suffered decades of major underinvestment, which has left us behind our European neighbours,’ says the foundation’s Rory Carroll. ‘In France, Germany or Holland it is a legal requirement for local authorities to provide and maintain high-quality sports sites. There is no such obligation here so when council budgets are squeezed, sadly the first thing to go often tends to be community sport.’
Birmingham and Manchester remain among the poorest areas, while London carries 16 per cent of the country’s population but just three per cent of its football facilities. Critics of the £9.3billion Olympic budget suggest the money would have been better spent on overhauling the country’s sporting infrastructure.
‘There is much more work to be done,’ admits Carroll. ‘While we are delighted with the achievements of the first ten years, we look forward to the next ten years of enabling more people play sport.’
