English football chief Greg Dyke says that the Football Association must take some of the blame for England failing to win the World Cup for 50 years, and believes that people at the organistion should "shoot ourselves" if England fail to progress from their group at Euro 2016 this summer.
Roy Hodgson's side have been drawn with Wales, Russia and Slovakia at the tournament in France and Dyke said it would be "bad news for English football" if the team failed to make the knock-out stages.
He was speaking at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of England's sole World Cup win. Since winning the tournament on home soil in 1966 the team have made one semi-final, in 1990, and failed to qualify for three of the 12 tournaments.
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However, Dyke believes that England have the ability to win a tournament soon.
"The FA is the richest FA in the world, the most income. The FA has to take some of the blame," he said. "We should have won a tournament in the last 50 years. We haven't. But we will win in the next 50 years, hopefully long before."
He added that the current generation of young players, like Spurs teenager Dele Alli, would be at their peak by 2022 and England had a chance of winning the World Cup that year.
"Given that it was little more than two years ago that Dyke made dire warnings that England's future was gravely imperilled by a lack of home-grown players in the Premier League, the sight of him grinning with a replica of the Jules Rimet trophy once clutched by Bobby Moore and talking so bullishly marked an unlikely turnaround," says Matt Dickenson of The Times.
Dyke's comment about England "shooting" themselves also raised eyebrows. "It was a flippant response to a question about what would be seen as success at the European Championship, but his was a poor choice of words before a tournament in France, less than two months after the Paris terror attacks," says the Daily Mail.
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