'Down one cobbled alley, an impromptu game of football was kicking off, played between eight-year-olds. Their pitch was a vertiginous one, leading straight down to the port-side. One poor pass or shinned trap or sloppy header and the ball was away, bouncing towards the quays. Which meant they dazzled in their control; all of them, even at eight. Nobody scored a goal, but they didn't seem to mind, they were revelling in the joy of touch.
If that scene were played out in England, any passing scout worth his salt would have had half those boys down at the nearest League club's academy. Agents would be beating a path to their parents' door, offering inducements and blandishments. Soon they would sign contracts with clauses which preclude them from spontaneous kickarounds with their chums; insurance issues, you understand. They would be lectured about diet, given media training and spend endless hours learning about the virtues of quality rest. Their only contact with a ball would be in organised, coached sessions. In Portugal, meanwhile, they just play football.
David Beckham, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are the first full generation to have graduated from the academy experiment in England. They have learnt their football in institutions. Such places have done them proud, developing them into model professionals who have earned a marvellous living from the game. But how much has that education cost them in terms of spontaneity?
When England needed a touch of magic in the quarter-final, they had instead a bunch of players schooled on routine and organisation. The only person who might have provided it for them was injured. Wayne Rooney, too, has come through the academy system. But because of his prodigious physical assets, he has been able to break out much earlier in life, before the rough edges have been rounded out.
Maybe that is why the poorer nations have prospered here. Not because poverty is of itself an engine of football development. Rather, without glossy academies, their football maintains that improvisational edge of chaos that comes from the cobbles.'
Stories that Rooney enjoys getting back out on the street for a kick about with his mates after appearing for Everton would seem to back up Jim's theory.