Many have argued England’s failure to reach Austria & Switzerland is due to this record low in domestic players, but there are certain facts that seem to be consistently omitted by those who further this point of view.

The story leads on the “big slide” (3.9%, or 21 players) in the number of Englishmen who played Premiership football last season compared to 2006-7 campaign. It is frankly ludicrous to suggest that these 21 fewer English players have had any baring on the fate of the national team, especially when you consider that Michael Tongue and Darren Ambrose were among their numbers.

Fabio Capello was sensible enough not to be drawn on the figures, and said: “But more important is quality – the level of the player. At the moment the total is 34% but the (quality) level is high.”

And of course this is true. The Premier League is streets ahead of any other division in the world at the moment. When the BBC talk about “just 34.1%” of players being English, we should perhaps be delighting in the fact that a third of the players which make up the most dominant league in the world hail from England. No other country gets close to that figure.

It is not as though English players are not getting opportunities. If you have any footballing ability in this country, it is likely you will be snapped up by a club and given some of the best training in the world. English players are not forced abroad to play on a bigger stage. Indeed, there is not one top quality English footballer plying their trade outside the Premier League (no, David Beckham does not count.) But at the end of the day, how many Premier League games you give Titus Bramble, he is not suddenly going to transform into a world class player. If anything, there are a disproportionate amount of English players playing at the top level.

Lets look at last week’s Champions League final. The game is undeniably the height of club football world wide and is the culmination of a tournament which arguably features a higher quality of football than even the World Cup. Now between the 22 starters last Wednesday, 10 (or 45%) were English. Not a single Brazilian or Italian started the game, and only one German and just three Frenchmen. Isn’t this an era of unparalleled English dominance in terms of the global footballing talent pool.

Many of the criticisms come from an atrociously run FA, jealous of the increasing power Richard Scudamore’s Premier League is gaining in world football. There is some hope for England, especially with Fabio Capello in charge, but one does still worry about how much damage to the national team Brian Barwick and co at Soho Square will do.

The reason England did not qualify for Euro 2008 is quite simple. They were abysmally managed by a man as incompetent as he was out of depth. Ultimate blame on the decision to appoint McClaren in the first place of course should have been passed on Barwick, but nevertheless he survived with his job in tact.

The foreign invasion on English football has arguably aided the quality of home grown players, and the English have caught up with their continental counterparts immeasurably in terms of technical ability in the last 15 years.

The fact of the matter is England has one of the best pools of talent in world football to select from. Ferdinand, Terry, Gerrard, Joe Cole, Rooney, Ashley Cole, Lampard, Carrick and Hargreaves are undoubtedly top quality players, who have consistently proved they CAN be world beaters, just not when playing for England. The focus needs to placed on getting the best out them, rather than xenophobic concerns about foreign imports.

Swedish football has long exported top players and managers to the rest of Europe, but there are signs that the trend is beginning to reverse.

This season Sweden’s top flight boasts more foreign players than ever before, all hoping to become stars in a new country just as the likes of Freddie Ljungberg and Zlatan Ibrahimović have across Europe.

Just one of the many foreign imports is James Keene, an English striker who was only 19 when he made the switch from Premier League Portsmouth to the Allsvenskran.

“It all happened really quickly,” Keene recalls, “I was playing at Portsmouth and had made a few appearances

when the assistant manager Jim Smith asked me if I would be interested in moving to Sweden for a year to get some experience.”

Smith had received a call from Roland Nilsson, then manager of GAIS and a coach he had worked with at Coventry in 2002. The two had kept in touch and when Nilsson asked if Portsmouth had any players

available for loan, Smith was happy to recommend Keene.

“Jim came to me and told me about the opportunity to get some first team experience. I didn’t find it to hard to adapt, and my now-wife moved with me too which made things easier. The biggest difference was the game. It is far less physical than back home in England. I remember getting booked in my first match.”

Keene finished his first year at GAIS as the club’s top scorer, catching the attention of some of Sweden’s bigger teams before completing a move to reigning champions IF Elfsborg. Despite emerging as one of the league’s best strikers, he still dreams of a return to the Premiership one day.

“I was hard to break through at Portsmouth. You look at them now and sometimes they only play one or two English players, but then that’s why they have done so well.

“Of course it’s everyone’s goal to play at the top level, and at the moment that is the Premier League, but I am happy where I am for the time being.

Despite this new wave of footballing immigrants, the Allsvenskan is still struggling. It places 28^th in UEFA’s ranking of Europe’s top divisions, behind leagues in Cyprus, Slovakia and Israel. No Swedish team has reached the group stages of the Champions League since Helsingborg during the 2000/01 season.

The league is still considered by most as a stepping stone to the Premiership, or one of Europe’s other major leagues. Although both Ljungberg and Ibrahimović began their careers in Sweden, it was not long until they had signed lucrative contracts at Arsenal and Ajax respectively.

“A lot are looking to move to England or France,” Keene notes, “but the Swedish league is getting better all the time. More foreign players are arriving and more money is being invested. Perhaps it is going the way or the Premiership but then Sweden are at the European Championships and England aren’t.”

The influx of foreign players was helped last December with a ruling which saw the Swedish Football Federation (SFF) remove its cap on non-European players. Previously clubs were only permitted to field three players from non-European countries.

At the time Helsingborg director Bo Nilsson, a team renowned for its foreign contingent, heralded the decision as a “victory” for his club. Malmo and Liberia defender Jimmy Dixon claimed it would, “Give more opportunities to African footballers in Sweden.”

But some are concerned that it will stunt the development of young Swedish players. Former Sweden captain Glenn Hysén fears that Swedish clubs are signing too many mediocre foreign players.

“It is great if you can bring in a player from Brazil who is really good, like Alfonso Alves was, as it is someone the youngsters can look up to. The problem is we are bringing in players who are not good enough.

“The young Swedish players are not coming up as they don’t get a chance. It won’t be a problem right away but in the long run it will harm us. What happened in England could happen to Sweden. I think England did not qualify for the European Championships because the best players at each club are not English.”

Still, if Keene’s example is anything to go by, some of the Allsvenskan’s new talent is more interested in helping, rather than hindering, Sweden’s international prospects.

“It would be a great honour to play for any country. I have been here two years now and I think it takes five before you are eligible for the national side. I would love to play for Sweden, and if the opportunity came along I would definitely take it,” Keene says.

Perhaps Sweden’s football immigrants could prove a hit for both their clubs and the national team.