I think technique and having the experience of playing in other leagues help aswell as does different cultures.
Brazil/spain/argentina/portugal even france etc have players of much better technical ability than england and much of it is to do with the upbringing of players.
Here people are discouraged to be creative and are instantly labelled 'showboater/fancy dans' if they try anything different whereas in leagues and upbringing such as laliga players are encouraged to be creative. They also have a strong collection of south american based players playing in laliga and people coming up over there play the football on the ground with more emphasis on skill than strength because they see players like ronaldinho/messi/insiesta/xavi/silva/villa and the list goes on whereas here its the opposite imo. When lampard is one of the best technical players in the league, you have a problem because most of his game is based on his strenght and shooting without any creativity.
When england play with calm and possession of the ball at wembley, the crowd booed which pretty much sums it all up for me. They want long balls at times you'd think.
Its nothing to do with putting club before country imo its more do with with different cultures and upbringings and the style of football played.
Torres is a great striker for example, without doubt BUT he is not as clinical as villa who is a second striker or as good as eto'o but because he plays in england he is automaticaly given the best striker label. In Laliga you get less space in and around the box so you have to be very clinical when you get a chance and if you're a midfielder, have to be very creative to make a chance and thats why people like iniesta step up to the plate and be that guy. Even torres has said that the defenders in spain are better whereas here they are more agressive but much more niave and you get more space and chances.
Here carrick is considered creative... but he is the 'alonso' of spain and really is not a guy to make unpredictable passed through the eye of a needle stuff. He does great balls to players out wide and will pick a pass through the middle if its there but he cannot do it as be the player who can see a pass others cannot.
That all being said, we do have a few players of decent techinical ability. Rooney is the most technical with gerrard being good too and joe cole and beckham being of decent standard. Wallcot plays the arsenal brand of football so he will be more technical than physical too so there are some signs of hope however we will never be as technical as spain or latin american clubs BUT we may not be 10 years behind as a team though.
We may not be as good as spain but in a major tournament if we have our strongest team and with our defence being very good, we could make a good match against them!
England really are not a terrible team (we're not great either), we just lack in the technical department.
Sending players to play their football in other countries imo would help but who would want them? lol
pz!
oh by the way, i think we have improved under capello, we were even worse under maclaren!