Greg Dyke has set English football the target of winning the World Cup in 2022 - as if our failure in all tournaments since 1966 was because we weren't trying. This is witless managerialism. It's an example of exactly what Henry Mintzberg complained about:

All to often, when managers don't know what to do, they drive their subordinates to "perform". (Managing, p62)

And by his own admission, Dyke doesn't know what to do - which is why he's setting up a commission to investigate why there are so few English players in the Premier League. Worse still, even if he did know what to do, he wouldn't have the power to do it. The core of the team that wins the World Cup in 2022 will be in their mid-late 20s and so be late teenagers now. They should therefore be on the books of top clubs and making names for themselves. But are the likes of Ross Barkley, Phil Jones, Raheem Sterling and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain really sufficient to win a World Cup? If they're not, there's not much the FA can do because, as Dyke says,"The FA doesn't control player development, the clubs do."

Sure, organizations occasionally succeed by setting big hairy audacious goals. But such goals only succeed if you have a roadmap for achieving them. Dyke doesn't.

Indeed, I suspect that winning the World Cup is the wrong sort of target for the FA. It should be focussing on improving the grassroots of the game, by giving small kids more and better coaching; Dyke rightly notes that England has fewer coaches than rival nations.

One thing such an improvement requires is a change in attitudes, in culture - putting more stress upon intelligence and technique rather than just passion and aggression. England has traditionally lacked the former: our equivalents of Pirlo or Xavi have been notably lacking.

Herein, though, lies a problem. Something as big as football reflects the culture of wider society. And our culture militates against top quality football. As I've said before, a society which has long been divided between white collar managers who do brainwork and blue collar grunts who do as they're told is the sort of society which is likely to produce physically strong players who inflexibly implement their managers' plans; think of Sam Allardyce teams. And it's not the sort of society which'll give us players of intelligence and technique necessary to win World Cups. Two things of which Englishmen have long complained - our lack of football success and the paucity of our skilled craftsmen compared to Germany - are related.

In this sense, Dyke is a symptom of the problem. Whilst managerialists like him have disproportionate influence in our society, we'll not win much.

Another thing: it could be that English football is shaped by the weather. But there's nothing Dyke can do about this either.