Dyke Names His England Commission

Chairman Greg Dyke has named the men who will form an FA Commission tasked with deciding the best way to develop English talent.

Dyke confirmed on Wednesday that Glenn Hoddle would be on the Commission, which will examine ways of increasing the numbers of young English players playing at the top level, and ultimately improving the prospects of the national team.

The Commission has a wide range of experience in it, with Dyke naming eight, with one or two places still to be filled.

"There's myself, obviously, there's Roger Burden who is the deputy chairman of the FA, Howard Wilkinson coming from the League Managers Association, Ritchie Humphreys from the PFA, Greg Clarke from the Football League, Glenn Hoddle, Dario Gradi who has this amazing record of producing young kids, and Danny Mills, a recently retired player who recently wrote a paper on what we should do," Dyke said.

"But we're still talking to one or two other people and we expect to have a commission of about 10.

"We would hope to report back at the end of March, we've started on a lot of the research we need to do. It's quite a big job if you're going to look at what's happening in other countries as well. I don't believe in setting things ups to go on for years, boredom gets to everybody in the end, and I think six months is about right.

"If we can finish it by the end of March, well I hope we come up with a set of proposals that people will buy into, to give English kids a chance of playing at the top level."

The Premier League will not be taking part in the commission, but will be making statistical data available to the Commission.

"I was disappointed the Premier League didn't come on the commission but I understand why. They are cooperating fully and a lot of the clubs have contacted me personally and said they'd like to come and give evidence, they'd like to talk about it which I think is really encouraging," Dyke said.

"I do think a lot of people who own clubs must be thinking 'hang on I'm putting all this money into our youth system and I'm not getting enough out'.

The Commission will look abroad for examples of good practice, with Dyke citing Belgium as an example of a country with a clear structure.

"We will certainly be looking at different countries and what happened, what do they recommend and what happened. We're slightly different aren't we because we have got the richest league in the world.

"If you're a young Belgian kid you can see a progression, where you're going to play next. We haven't got that progression I don't think.

"Most of them that we've talked to would quite happily come and give their views, I don't think they don't think they've got the time, currently they've got the time to devote to being part of the commission but no-one has said 'I don't want to talk about this'."

Dyke also refused to discuss England manager Roy Hodgson's future if the team fail to qualify for the World Cup.

He said: "What I don't want to do is get into a discussion about backing or not backing Roy Hodgson at the moment because we have got two important games. I have got a lot of time for Roy Hodgson - I am a Roy Hodgson fan.

"What I don't want to do is get into a debate this week about Roy Hodgson. I think the debate is, 'Are we going to win or not?' I am told we can still lose after Friday night we can still lose on Tuesday if we lose 7-0 to Poland. I am sweating!"