England National team Roster

On any given game day, millions all over the world tune in to the English Premier League to see some of the best players in the world competing. It's lovely to watch Brazilians matched up with Frenchmen, Argentinians squaring off against Italians, and players from all around the world working together as teammates. And yet, it's become common for some to think this is a bad thing for English football.

It's difficult to pinpoint just when exactly it became popular opinion that English football wasn't English enough. It likely occurred sometime in the early 2000s when the EPL became the most profitable league in the world, and as a result, numerous international players began to appear on rosters, taking up spots that could have well gone to English players.

And when England continued to fail in major tournaments, the lack of first team league minutes for English players became an easy excuse, even though the expectations might have been more of a problem than the actual results.

"The basic idea is wrong, " said Simon Kuper co-author of the best-selling Soccernomics, which devotes an entire chapter to the English national team debate. "The idea is that England does badly at football. They do as well as you'd expect."

Kuper added: "It's an old fashioned protectionist idea. You get the question in England that we should be the best in the world because we invented the game. That's ridiculous because we invented the game more than 150 years ago."

Kuper points out that the last two full time national team managers, Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson, actually have the top two winning percentages in history. So really, England isn't any worse than it was 30 years ago. In fact, you could argue they are actually doing better than ever.

Roy Hodgson asking God in heaven to deliver him better national team players. Photo by Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Yet now England is left grasping for solutions to nonexistent problems because of the silly assumption that the league needs to be more English. The latest proposal is probably the most xenophobic to date. This week the English Football Association proposed changes that would limit the amount of foreign players on EPL team rosters, and that would also make it more difficult for foreign players to obtain work permits.

"Something like 95 percent of work permit appeals go through, " former England fullback Danny Mills, a member of an FA commission established two years ago by chairman Greg Dyke that focused on improving the national team, told the BBC. "On what basis? We want the creme de la creme."

The FA's study concluded that under these stricter work permit rules more than 40 roster spots would have opened up this season for English players. And that in turn would lead to better results for the national team.