England Team Can Inspire The Nation - Prince WIlliam

England will enter the 2014 World Cup winners as a good but not great team. A team expected to advance to the knock-out stages but not much further. A team who has won just one World Cup despite being home to the World's elite domestic league.

Speaking at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London, the site where the founders of English football met in 1863, The Duke Of Cambridge had some inspiring words regarding out athletes and the vigour with which the FA has attacked the lack of silverware in the National team cabinet:

"Our national players are role models for millions of young people and I think we need to give those highly pressured and driven players the support and training they need to live up to their rightly exalted status.

"I am glad to see that, under the new chairman and commission, there is renewed vigour to improve the competitive quality of our national game, for all our sakes.

"But I would also encourage us to make sure we retain sportsmanship at the heart of this energetic drive for success.

"Regrettably, Her Majesty's reign includes only one time that England won the World Cup, but I know that Greg and Roy are trying to make up for lost time now."

Prince William, unlike so many royals has a passion for the game. He often visits the National Football Centre at St James Park to speak and visit the people at the very foundation of English Football.

He also wrote a letter to Roy Hodgson and the team to congratulate them on their qualification for the World Cup in Brazil.

I'm still very sceptical about the FA Commission, and despite all the bravado and plaudits it has received for trying to do something about the national game, I don't know what it will achieve in principle. It's very nice in theory to send a contingent of football minds out into the field to investigate, but it all comes down to the problems found and the solutions put in place to combat said problems.

Regardless, it's nice to see some positivity around the football team and I look forward to hearing the results of the investigation in March.

There is no doubt that we as a country love our football, and when the World Cup comes along the country grinds to a halt for 90 minutes......unfortunately that's never past the quarter-final stage. However with the pressure off next year, lets get behind the lads and see what they can do, you never know what could happen!