come through the Clairfontaine academy

THE thing I like most about the proposed National Football Centre is that, unlike most major sporting investments, it is not in London.

Even though the £80 million football academy is not an attraction and therefore London will lose nothing by letting it go, it is still nice to see a major sporting centre being built outside the capital's precious boundaries.

That is, of course, assuming it is going to be built at all.

There has been major hype that it will be the fulcrum of English football in the future. Whatever achievements our club and international sides produce in years to come will be down to the centre at Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire, the proposal's supporters claim.

That is not strictly true, of course, as major football talent has and will always emerge in this country regardless of any National Football Centre. But the point is that there will be greater quality in quantity on our football pitches if the Football Association can just get the centre up and running.

You only have to look at the French equivalent at Clairfontaine which is widely acclaimed as being the single most important contributor to France's triumphs in the 1998 World Cup, and European Championship two years later.

It is a worry that the FA has put the project on the back burner because of the prohibitive cost of building the new £757 million Wembley Stadium.

A national stadium needs to be built and, even though some major sporting attractions should be outside London, this one must be in the capital where it can be shown off to its maximum effect to the rest of the world.

Firstly, however, the national academy should take precedence over the national stadium.

There is no point building the best venue in the world and using it as a stage for foreign teams to beat us on.

As much as Gerrard, Beckham and Owen are worshipped they are not nearly as good from either a technical or effective point of view as France's Zidane, Vieira or Henry, or the rest of the world's top players.

Had that English trio gone through Clairfontaine it is arguable that Gerrard would have been more consistent, Beckham would have been able to dribble and Owen would have been able to kick with his left foot. All three are fantastic players but they would have been better.

Clairfontaine is proof that football has to modernise to keep improving, despite France's poor showing in last summer's World Cup.

The argument that Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and the rest of England's 1966 World Cup winning side learned their trade kicking a tennis ball up and down the street is the product of a dinosaur mentality.

Football has become quicker and technically superior and its superstars are becoming the finished product at a young age because of the grounding they get at academies.

No English striker - and Robbie Fowler is the closest - can match Nicolas Anelka on the technical side, yet the Clairfontaine old boy won the double with Arsenal at 19 and has played for Real Madrid, Paris St Germain and Liverpool before the age of 24. He is also France's fifth choice striker.

From a political point of view the FA feel under pressure to pile all their resources into building the new national stadium.

First they should be building a far greater legacy for English football at Burton at a tenth of the cost.