When England play abroad, it is common for the press team to have a match against their foreign counterparts. Games of dreadful quality they may be, but they are as revealing as those involving the professionals. English reliance on physical strengths — ie, getting stuck in — is, invariably, set against far superior technique.

The point is to suggest that whatever good quotas may do English football, they will only go so far. They will not address why keepy-uppy games on a foreign beach invariably collapse when the ball gets to the Englishman in the circle. They will not explain why England is the only country where defenders are applauded for racing back to head the ball to their goalkeeper.

The national team has not reached a leading final for more than 40 years and, while we can all point to the near-misses and to the calibre of a few present stars, it becomes increasingly apparent that there are problems with English culture, the way we see the game. The brain is underused — and that applies to playing, coaching and administration.

We complain about the number of imports but never stop to ask why so few English players and managers work abroad. We attack Sven-Göran Eriksson and Steve McClaren but fail properly to consider why England, alone of the leading football nations, cannot produce a single home-grown coach capable of leading the national team.

These are big themes, but who is going to tackle them? Is it any wonder that England has such deep-seated problems when the FA and the Premier League, guardians of the game, struggle to agree on anything?

Those bodies, and the Football League, commissioned a joint report on youth development — the Lewis review — which was meant to find a consensus. Instead, it has become something else to squabble over. Why should the independent inquiry proposed by Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister, be any different?

Perhaps quotas will give a few young Englishmen greater opportunity, but they will not address these weighty issues. We would not need this debate about restricting foreigners if England, a country with a mad passion for football, produced teenagers of better quality.

The clubs say that the academies have been going for only nine years, that technique is improving, that children are being liberated by a ban on parents on the touchline and that they will come good in time. But with the game’s administrators so caught up in power battles and wealth creation, can we rely on anyone to look at the bigger picture?