[pvg]

A somewhat overlooked factor: Luck. International tournaments are won by single elimination games - in the case of the World Cup, four. Four wins in a row in a relatively low-scoring sport against the best the rest of the world has to offer. You have to be good but you also have to be a bit lucky. Unfortunately for England, they've rarely been particularly good and they've often been particularly unlucky.

Another common factor among many World Cup winners is a top flight national club league that produces the core of the national team and drives significant tactical or other innovation. That would give you (in their respective heydays) Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Spain. The Netherlands is missing - bad luck.

The Premiere league is commercially successful but isn't quite that sort of league. English clubs are regularly embarrassed by their top European competitors. There's not much incentive to fix this, though, since the league prints money as it is.

[mamon]

The reason why English clubs are not successfull internationally is proably because their own league is so demanding, that they simply save their strength for national competition, ignoring Champions League altogether.

And this even makes financial sense, because winning Premier League pays much bigger money than winning Champions League.

[pvg]

That doesn't sound very plausible to me. There's a big scramble for the top 4 every year.