McClaren Delight With England Plan to Play Less and Practise More

There will be slightly less of England on the nation's screens in future. Steve McClaren's desire to schedule the occasional get-together for his squad instead of a friendly is to be met in the new television contract, running for four seasons from August 2008, that the Football Association has put out to tender. The current deal allows for a maximum of 20 such games and the limit will be reduced to 18.

Since England do not play on every permissible date at present, the likelihood is that McClaren's players would meet purely for a training camp once a season. The difficulties encountered before last week's 1-0 defeat by Spain suggest that February would be the ideal time. Of the 28 men named in the initial party for that fixture, eight were unable to take part.

Clubs going for the title or preparing for the Champions League must resent the distraction of an international friendly. McClaren does not believe actual matches are always essential for England. "The key thing is more time," he said yesterday. The FA, with ticket revenues from a near-60,000 last week and a TV audience of 8m watching England, may disagree but are prepared to compromise.

Discussion and experimentation on the training ground might be enhanced sometimes if there was no game to be contested. "I want the flexibility to be able to control when we have friendlies and when we have get-togethers and what is the best preparation." McClaren said. "That has got to be under my control. That is what we are working towards with [the chief executive] Brian Barwick, with the FA regarding the opponents, and when we have them."

The idea of squad get-togethers, floated by McClaren's assistant, Terry Venables, in a newspaper column at the weekend, can be accommodated. Not including warm-up games before major tournaments, there are 38 international dates over four seasons starting in August 2008 and the FA estimates they will use only 32 of them for qualifiers and friendlies.

McClaren does not denigrate friendlies entirely. His first match in charge, against Greece, was an encouraging 4-0 victory. He welcomed a 1-1 draw in Amsterdam as well, after defeat by Croatia. "In Holland," he said, "we wanted a reaction, so it was important we got our best players."

In future England will aim to take the field when it suits the manager best.