This would struggle in England as implementing B “teams” would require a complete overhaul of the footballing tier something which would take years to put into place and would never be fully supported. You get the sense as well that this would ruin some of the league 1 and 2 clubs already suffering from low attendances, to be put down an extra tier would be catastrophic.
However its on a more grass roots level that England would benefit long term, our standards in youth development have been traditionally poor, English youngsters usually only have 3000 “contact hours” where in Spain and Germany they achieve double this before they sign a first team contract .Recently however Trevor Brooking -the FA’s director of football development- passed an act meaning up until the age of 13 children will play on smaller pitches as opposed to at 11 were they are made to play on full size pitches. This really draws on Brookings admiration of the Spanish style of play in that smaller pitches will encourage the player to be more comfortable on the ball and encourage short passing football as opposed to the “punt and run” 11 aside encourages. This is a clear indication of the FA’s decision to take a leaf out of Spains book and encourage a more skill based development at a grass roots level.
A friend of mine once knew a professional scout who one day, observing a top Premier League team observed a centre back curl in a 35 yard free kick. His manager, however was furious he was a defender and had no reason to be taking free kicks so the incident was completely forgotten. Had this been in Spain however the player would have practiced this week in, week out regardless of position until it was a valuable asset to the team.
This is key to the redevelopment of English football, embracing a new style of play from a grass roots level as opposed to straight out in the first team which the FA have tried unsuccessfully to do in the past, the likes of Fabio Capello and Sven Goran Erikkson meaning to get us to play a more attractive style of football when the problem lies right at the foot of English football. As before in my article; the death of the 4-4-2, football is changing and we need to keep up with the times. The traditional tactics many coaches enforce suit a style of play that was enforced in the 1980’s but is no longer the case.