Football: What we have now is a crisis of vested interest, a bundle of new money but no clear idea of how to spend it sensibly

If there is one thing to be learned from the past Premier League season it is that very few home-bred footballers can hold their own with the best imported talent. It was mostly foreigners who stopped the show - Gianfranco Zola, Juninho, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Eric Cantona, Roberto Di Matteo, Peter Schmeichel and, when the mood took him, Faustino Asprilla - who provided the liveliest entertainment.

You can go as far as to say that of the players available to the England coach, Glenn Hoddle, only Alan Shearer and Tony Adams are entitled to be confident of election for a properly assembled Premier League representative XI. Roy Keane would get in and, perhaps, Ryan Giggs, but being Irish and Welsh respectively, they do not come into Hoddle's consideration either.

Take last week's FA Cup final between Chelsea and Middlesbrough: players from all sorts of places and not one full England international. No wonder that the Football Association's first technical director, Howard Wilkinson, is pressing for a development structure because as things stand there is unlikely to be much of an improvement.

For example, according to a number of managers in the Premier League there is not much point in casting closer to home: little coming through, transfer fees out of all proportion to ability, the flow of talent from Scotland long since dried up. "We don't look there anymore," I was told last week.

Another piece of information suggests a further influx of overseas players. It is that all but the most important performers in Italian football can now be purchased. "It was astonishing to hear some of the names that were mentioned," said the Leeds manager, George Graham.

The inherited problems of Thomas Brolin and Tony Yeboah did not deter Graham from making an extensive tour of European football last season. "Even when you allow for the foreigners who haven't done much here there is better value for money overseas," he said. "With the Bosman thing hanging over them even the wealthiest clubs are looking to cash in on the money that is flowing into the Premier League and it won't surprise me if more big names are here before the start of next season."

It seems that Manchester United will enter the transfer market in a big way following Eric Cantona's unexpected retirement. Alex Ferguson's keen eyes are not only on Juninho but the Croat attacker, Alen Boksic, for whom he made a move last summer before Juventus stepped in.

You can go on and on like this. More imported players, fresh proof that Wilkinson's blueprint for the future was long overdue. Trouble is that a tradition of fragmented government stands in the way of progress. And having made their own investments, how many clubs are prepared to address the problem on a national basis? Wilkinson's blueprint deserves serious consideration but there have been blueprints before that did not lead to anything. Following one of England's many World Cup disappointments the FA brought together a number of luminaries, including Matt Busby and Joe Mercer, but the ideas they put forward died on the vine.

What we have now, I think, is a crisis of vested interest, a bundle of new money but no clear idea of how to spend it sensibly. "Salaries have gone through the roof but I don't blame the players for getting all they can," one manager said to me last week at the Football of the Year dinner. "I blame the people who agree their contracts. One of my players asked for pounds 750,000 a year to renew his contract. I told him that he might as well ask for a million because he's not getting it. And what about all these guys who are making a huge profit on their investment in English football?"

I don't know where all this will lead but unless English football responds to the dangers implied by Wilkinson's report the roof could come tumbling in.

At a recent coaching conference Wilkinson was told that there are 10 full-sized covered football fields in Finland. A climatic necessity perhaps but nevertheless an impressive aid to development. Terry Venables has been shown marvellous facilities in Australia. "The people who took me around assumed automatically that we have similar advantages. It would have been embarrassing to put them right so I put on my best smile and nodded," he said.

As for a team from the Premier League who could argue against Schmeichel, Bjornebye, Adams, Leboeuf, Petrescu, Keane, Di Matteo, Juninho, Zola, Bergkamp and Shearer. Just two Englishmen.