Coaches are only one aspect. They are not insignificant, but they are also only one piece of a much larger pie. What we need to do is look at these other nations and look at what they are doing, what we are not doing and what we can do. Obviously the Arab clubs are throwing money at it. They have that resource available to them, so it's a reasonable option for them. We don't have that resource so then we look to Japan and Korea. They are in that €10m-17m range. They are hitting that value through development. So, we need to ask what are they doing that we are not. They are playing considerably more football for starters. They have full pyramids. They have domestic transfer systems. They have prize money for winning their leagues. They have a nation wide plan. We fall behind in all of those areas.
All that being said, I do think we punch above our weight. Especially considering many ACL squads have a lot of young players with low game minutes. Which makes it all the more sad and frustrating. If we had a Japanese level of structure and planning, I have no doubts we would in the mix with those €17m squads. Iceland was mentioned in one of these threads, and if you look at how they got to being more competitive, all it basically took was for everyone involved to be on the same page. Wouldn't that be nice.
