Oakeshott, Rooney and Leptokurtosis

One of my favourite pieces of wisdom is this from Michael Oakeshott:

Like lonely men who, to gain reassurance, exaggerate the talents of their few friends, we exaggerate the significance of our moral ideals to fill in the hollowness of our moral life. ("The tower of Babel.")

This beautiful analogy works in many other contexts. England fans are exaggerating the significance of the fat Scouser to fill in the hollowness of English football. They value Rooney not merely because of his ability - which I'll concede is considerable - but because much of the rest of English football is, let's face it, rubbish. 
This is disguised by the fact that the bell curve of English footballers is highly leptokurtotic. There's a fat tail of excellence - half the England team are world-class - but very little just behind. There are several tests of this:
Name an England third XI. Not very good, is it?
Think of a mid-table Premiership team - Charlton or West Ham, say. How many English players, whom they could reasonably hope of buying, would materially improve their side?
Rooney aside, how many exciting under-21 players do England have? Aaron Lennon, Stewart Downing? An awful lot of them - Bentley, Pennant, Thomas, possibly Hoyte - are Arsene Wenger's rejects.
Think back to the 1970s. We had Tony Currie, Alan Hudson, Frank Worthington (pbuh), Stan Bowles, Peter Osgood and Rodney Marsh. Wouldn't any be a great replacement for Rooney? And yet Danny Mills has won more England caps than any of them.
I dunno who or what to blame for this decline in English football: increased road traffic and the threat of child molesters reducing kids' ability to play in the street; the sale of playing fields; the rise of the Playstation or fast food; the opposition to competitive games in some schools; terrible coaching of children; teachers' reluctance to take on extra-curricular activity. But whatever the reason, the fact's the same - barring that fat tail, England's footballers aren't very good.

Comments

[Mark T]

I read a very interesting piece suggesting that making 11 year olds play on a full size pitch encourages the big centre forward, big centre back and hoof it between the two style at which we excel.

[dearieme]

Ha, you think you've got probs. Look at poor old Scotland. Weep, sob, blub.