Brits behaving badly abroad

In recent years, it has not just been British tourists who have not been displaying their best form on foreign soil. While the influx of foreign talent is ever increasing to these shores, improving the quality of our domestic games, the number of British players who have succeeded abroad remains few and far between. Many have tried, but few have lit up the respective leagues they've ended up in.
One of the most recent has been former Aston Villa and Manchester City winger-cum-striker Darius Vassell. The 22-capped former England international is probably best remembered for an overhead kick goal against Holland on his international debut in 2002, as well as the decisive penalty miss in the Euro 2004 quarter-final defeat to Portugal. But last summer, when it became apparent he was surplus to requirements at megabucks Manchester City, he decided to try his luck further afield, and signed for Turkish top division side Ankaragucu. Despite 3,000 fans turning up to celebrate his arrival, and scoring in his second game, he scored just three further goals during the remainder of the season, and left after his debut season with his tail between his legs.
His is not the first bizarre foreign arrival. Former Middlesbrough youth player Ronnie O'Brien signing a five-year contract at Serie A giants Juventus towards the end of the 1990s, Jay Bothroyd's stint at Perugia and Stan 'dogging' Collymore's dismal attempt to save his football career at Real Oviedo (signing a three year deal at the Spanish club before announcing his retirement from football after just three appearances, cuing legal action from Oviedo) all spring to mind.
If you look through any list of British footballers who have succeeded abroad, the majority of entries will have strutted their stuff in the last century. Take the Daily Mail's list - just two of their top ten British footballing ex-pats (David Beckham and Steve McManaman) are what could be classed as recent players, from the last ten years or so, with the other eight being made up of John Charles, Kevin Keegan, Gary Lineker, Chris Waddle, David Platt, Graeme Souness, Trevor Francis and Paul Lambert. The last of those, former Scottish international Lambert, was a surprising Champions League winner with Borussia Dortmund in 1997, but such modern success stories are so few and far between. Owen Hargreaves was another talented addition to the Bundesliga at Bayern Munich (although his career is on the verge of ruin due to injuries since signing for Manchester United) and aside from Beckham, no other players even around the England squad have made an impact abroad. The cases of Jonathon Woodgate and Michael Owen at Real Madrid are cases in point. They cost a combined £21 million - and played a combined 44 games. Owen scored goals sporadically, despite not always being a regular first-team player and departing after his first season.
And herein lies part of the problem - to an extent there is mistrust of British players abroad. While the physical and mental attributes are undoubtedly there, the same can not really be said of the technical abilities. Even those players who have moderate success abroad are most revered for their fighting 'British Bulldog' qualities. When McManaman helped Real Madrid win the Champions League in his debut season, despite scoring a fantastic goal in the final win over Valencia, the Spanish press praised the way he had transformed himself from a playmaker into a hard-working midfielder. That is the same role performed so adroitly by Lambert and Hargreaves, and even Lineker was transformed from a striker into a winger during his time at Barcelona. The same can even be said to an extent about David Beckham. While he is a set-piece wizard and a crossing master, he is never likely to beat his man with a trick or get the crowd up of their feet in that respect - he was a 'Galactico' more in brand than style on the pitch.
This may portray a deeper-lying problem with our national game. More time and emphasis needs to be placed on technical ability ahead of physical prowess - we need to be creating footballers not merely athletes, and this needs to start at academy level and continue it's way upwards - and this can all be linked into England's failure at the World Cup this summer. Maybe if more of our top footballers tested themselves abroad (such as Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard), in an 'alien' environment such as La Liga, Serie A or the Bundesliga, they would benefit from that broadening of experience and skills when they return to play for the national side.
Foreign teams seem to be generally reluctant to bring in British talent unless they have marketing potential (Beckham), are out-of-contract (McManaman), are a youth team player (Hargreaves) or are available for a vastly reduced transfer fee (Owen). The transfer fees and wages demanded are often exorbitant, as they are in the Premier League, and top foreign team feel they can get better talent for the same or less cost. Apart from last season, where no British team progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League, there has been at least one British club in the final since 2005. However, how many of those players who featured in those finals were British - Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard, Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Darren Fletcher. The top British clubs flood themselves with foreign talent because they don't believe homegrown players are generally good enough, apart from a few notable exceptions. That is a view shared by our foreign counterparts. Even top Spanish players now ply their trade abroad to broaden their horizons.
If more British players tried their luck abroad, it would undoubtedly aid the national team. The likes of Rooney and Gerrard are constantly linked with moves abroad, with nothing coming of the speculation. But we have to make our players more enticing to foreign clubs, at a younger age (think Les Ferdinand at Besiktas but with more success), to start this process flowing. It's a cycle which needs to be addressed to improve both the strength of our national and domestic games - when the export figures close the gap on their import counterparts, we will start to reap the benefits across the board. As the likes of Sir Trevor Brooking have been saying for who knows how long, this process has to start at the academies, and work it's way up. And a good place to start would be a national academy for talented young players, in the mould of the former base at Lilleshall.