Dan Ashworth has pointed to the establishment of St George’s Park as an elite hub for English football as his greatest legacy from his time as the Football Association’s technical director, with representatives of the German national setup having visited to learn from its success.
St George’s Park opened in 2012 and the £105m facility is home to England’s 28 national teams, who train on the 13 outdoor pitches or indoor 3G surface. Ashworth joined the following year and played a significant role in establishing the site outside Burton-on-Trent as the home of the FA’s national coach education programme, as well as a Fifa-recognised centre of medical excellence.
The site’s reputation precedes it, with visitors from other sports and rival national federations keen to emulate its impact. “The remit I and the new technical division took on was to fill St George’s Park with good quality people and make it the home and hub of England football, somewhere people would be proud to come,” said Ashworth, who left the FA to take up a similar role at Brighton this year. “We wanted people inside and outside our game to look at it as best practice so cycling, for instance, or cricket or rugby or the German federation, would come and ask: ‘What are you doing here? How is it working?’
“We’d said early on that one of the signs of success would be if people wanted to visit, including foreign associations. From the feedback, and certainly the number of visitors, that is something the staff should be really proud of.”
The German Football Federation is seeking to establish a €150m national training centre and academy, to be built on a former racecourse in Frankfurt, which it hopes to open by 2021. “They have been at the top of the game for a number of years and there’s more than enough that we can learn from them,” Ashworth said. “So I was quite pleased they felt they could take a bit from us.”
Ashworth cited dual and multi-nationalities as one of the issues his successor, Les Reed, will have to address. Gareth Southgate pointed out last week that “over 50% of our under-16s have dual nationality and some could play for more than two countries”. Although the FA secured Declan Rice, who is expected to make his England debut this month despite three caps in friendlies for the Republic of Ireland, they risk losing other talents. Southgate chose not to call up Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who remains with the under-21s, despite DR Congo actively encouraging the Crystal Palace right-back to represent them at senior level.
The player is thought to favour England. “But the diversity of the population means that, of the 75 under-15s on our radar, 55 of them are eligible for more than one country,” said Ashworth. “That could be Scotland, Ireland and Wales as well, but the diversity of our country is thankfully changing. That gives us a bigger and better pool of players to pick from but also words of warning to national associations: don’t assume players are locked into your particular nation because, like in club land, there might be more suitors looking at them as well.
“We cannot be arrogant enough to assume that, if a kid is living here, he automatically wants to play for England. People have different emotional ties, while smaller nations might be able to offer a different pathway. You have to make sure you make people feel welcome and, ultimately, as they leave St George’s Park they should be saying to themselves: ‘It’s making me a better player and I’m desperate to come back.’”
Ashworth is credited with transforming the culture at the FA, with eye-catching successes enjoyed by the junior national sides in 2017 as well as the seniors at the World Cup last summer. Yet he admitted regret over the handling of the Mark Sampson affair in 2017 when the FA issued a full apology to Eni Aluko and Drew Spence after a third inquiry concluded Sampson, then England women’s manager, had made discriminatory remarks to both players.
“I’ve been involved in some disappointments: Euro 2016 was a disappointment for us all, and the Eni Aluko [incident] was a disappointment,” he said. “I would never want any athlete to leave our programme feeling negatively about England and their England experience. Thankfully, because of that, we’re in a better place now as an organisation to deal with those sorts of issues going forwards.”