For years now many a football pundit and fan have discussed the merits of having restrictions on the amount of foreigners allowed to play in our domestic league, writes blogger Jarrod Hill.
Now that Sepp Blatter is forging ahead with his new plan of six English players and five foreigners for our starting XI; let’s take a look at what the ramifications could be.
We will ignore the fact that this idea may or may not materialise due to European employment law and see if its prime objective of improving national teams is a just one.
So the idea is this, if clubs are forced to field English players they will have to develop home grown talent rather than employing cheaper options from abroad, this in turn will hopefully improve our national team while reducing the opportunity to buy the best players the world has to offer.
The underlying reason on this being pushed through by Blatter is the fact that English clubs are starting to dominate European football, he has openly admitted with the ever increasing financial power of the Premier League he fears seeing all English finals on a regular basis. I believe this comment hints more towards the fact that he wants to see more of a level playing field than wanting national teams to develop further, however most pundits are seeing it as a positive by-product of the scheme.
The first thing that strikes me about the idea is that in practice surely this would harm our nearest and dearest the most, if we take James Morrison as an example, he made his debut for Scotland last week after playing at other levels for England.
After accepting his chances of ever playing for England’s first team are minimal, he has taken up the option of playing International football for Scotland, but under the new proposals I am sure that Tony Mowbray would be strongly advising him not to play for Scotland as that would reduce his number of English players eligible to play for West Brom.
Therefore countries such as Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Republic of Ireland may find themselves recruiting from a much smaller pond.
Another by-product of the six plus five idea would be to make English players more expensive to buy and employ, not wanting to reduce the quality of your squad but then having to sign English players would be an exercise in supply and demand.
Every club in England would be looking to sign good English players and their value would be artificially higher than signing foreign based players and again we see the introduction of a rule which would further enhance the financial power already held by professional footballers in this country.
The optimistic side of me (yes I do have one, it is just very deep down), hopes it would re-focus our club sides into developing local talent rather than cherry picking youth players from all over Europe. Whether that would in turn enhance our national team is open to debate, but one thing remains clear, if English players were good enough they would be playing top flight football anyway.
From a practical point of view it would also represent a few managerial quandaries, for example substitutions, depending on your starting line up ratio of English to foreign players you may find that your substitutions are limited, not due to tactics or the players abilities , but due to their nationality.
Things such as injuries, suspensions, and lack of form are all going to have much more of a bearing to our teams than ever before, managers are going to be constantly worrying about ensuring they meet the quota, we may also see many players looking to gain English nationality to enhance their availability and chances of earning more money.
My personal view is that clubs should be allowed to focus on producing the best squad and team of players they possibly can, this ruling will serve to muddy already clear waters.
My fear is the knock on effects, rather than improving the game, could actually do it more harm, and when paying large sums of money to support our teams we want to see the best players, whether they are English, foreign, or from outer space!!!
55 Comments
I don’t see sending foreign players home will help England improve at international level. Supporting since the early fifties, English players have always been fit and thick. For many of them they lacked vision, ball control and were as subtle as used car salesmen. They played football that was completely different to their club football style. Worse, a succession of English managers has done little to change and improve the skill base. Is that what we want to go back to? Better, I think, is to play alongside the very best and have an English management that is committed to the highest standard. Maybe Capello but not from what I’ve seen in the USA or Trinidad/Tobago matches.
The problem is that this will not be allowed due to the Bosman rule. However, if you take that to its full extent then surely a player born in the European Union could play for any team in Europe, including England even if they are French!! Once this gets realised and someone take it to court it may be tht the England team will be the pick of those playing in England - problem solved, England win everything. Only problem then is, who would want to support such a team?
it just isnt a good idea its a great idea and it should be brought into action as soon as possable
Well for starters, I am giving an honest objective opinion, whether or not half of everyone will probably write me off as a “yank.”
I see the value in the rule itself. England have not met the expectations of the country, nor what anyone else would have thought they’d have achieved. So, naturaly we come back home and start asking questions. Is it the manager? That is taken care of. Is it the player selection? New players who have never before been given a fair chance (Defoe, Barry etc) have now had their chance, that is taken care of. So is it problems with youth development? Here we are. As far a solution this puts more english on the pitch, gives them more playing time. However I think there can be some very significant problems underlying this issue.
Six English players with 20 prem teams… that’s 120 English players who will be starting game in game out. Lets put that into perspective we have 23 people on the England national team 7 on the verge then the U-21’s. So that is 4-5 teams being able to place some real top quality talents on the pitch. But what does that leave for everyone else? That leaves 90 players or so left to fill in the remaining gaps. Can you honestly say there are 120 English players who are capable of being in the starting XI of every prem team? Bar the 20th team because as we saw last year a team like Derby… you may as well turn it into a charity and give some elementary school kids a shot! Now we take into account positions… no you will not have an evenly distributed amount of players to positions (20 CM 20 RW etc). So now we have problems with subs… Essentialy you are building two teams now, not as a cohesive unit but a separate English and foreign team, of which I also think is borederline segregation, because you can’t tell me people will not start labeling them as the minority.
Well this is getting long, but if you are unsure of how vastly the quality of the leage will drop… ask yourself do we have 100+ English players capable of competing with the likes of Spanish, German, etc teams?
Answer is no, you impliment this rule and you can say goodbye to any competetiveness within Europe.
Oh and I forgot to add the positives :).
The basis of the idea is brilliant. It will definitely help to improve the all English players by giving them more experience.
I just think that 6… is asking far too much. Maybe cut that in half and you have a more realistic plan.
Fact is domestic quality drops… where do you think all of the real quality English players will want to be? Its like asking a player whether he wants to develope in a team that is hoping to break into the top four or is already in CL football. They will go to the top 4, which in this case is going to become the Spanish or Italian League.
Utter rubish what about when the spainish and italian clubs won all the Eurpean glory with mainly Brazilians !!! the rest of europe must hate us so much, anyway the Russians won the other European cup
You’ve made an excellent and well thought out case against the 6 - 5 proposal. Most would find it hard to debunk any of them.
The average fans who support this idea are probably fed up with the domination of 4 clubs ( aren’t we all? ) and most likely think it would restore a measure of parity. I don’t believe it would.
The best way to restore parity would be to adopt the yanks system for team sports.
Namely, the governing body sets a limit (min & max) for players in the squad. They also set a salary cap on THE SQUAD. In other words, if you have an excess of superstars your overall squad has to be weak. If you want a strong squad you have to reduce the number of superstars.
Injuries and anticipated recovery time have to be reported to the league. With minor injuries players are classed “day to day” and stay in the squad. For more serious injuries they are placed on the ‘disabled list’ for 14days, 21days, etc. Their place can be taken in the squad by any player whose wages does not break the squad cap.
This system is in place because the yanks recognise clubs cannot be allowed to go out of business. The best way to achieve that is for all clubs to be competitive with a reasonable chance of winning something.
Over here, our football clubs are increasingly under financial pressure, more so these last two years with administration now commonplace (Gretna are no more as of yesterday). The situation can only become increasingly worse.
If the Premier League is allowed to continue with its remorseless isolating of the rest of the clubs there will not be 92 clubs in England in 10years time. I doubt if there will be 46.
a wage cap would be more ideal!!
The conception of ‘thick English players’ may be the norm, but after reading these lucid and quite excellent arguments, the supporters are not. No.7 in particular deserves repeat in the National Press.
Grumpy ole man
Your knowledge and description of a system used in USA is excellent, it would certainly be well received by fans due to the fact if there was reduced wages for the players it would mean the clubs could reduce ticket prices and probably fill bigger stadiums. However, rules like these are always dismissed due to chairmen within the premiership would never go for it, they will fight tooth and nail to protect what they now have. Lets face it, the only way anything will get done these days is if Sky back it, the money, the voice, the power!!
On a completely different theme, if anyone is looking to buy the dvd of the season dont buy it from the club shop, £16 or order it on line from HMV.COM for £11.
Is everyone still coming down the vine on Friday???
All those coming say aye!!!
I think a wage cap is the only way to go. A budget for all teams then the best players would be not at the top clubs. Then the young English players would come though as they would be home grown and not signed for big money. Boing boing
Jarrod, your blog identifies the plusses and minuses very well particularly the situation arising when UK national teams are compelled to have to choose from a smaller pool of players - although I have always believed this to have been abused as a player can play for 2 countries at different levels or can say he has grandfather who had a holiday in Ireland and can therefore play for them etc! As regards the Premiership being able to buy the world’s best players, so what? Was it not Italy that was doing exactly the same thing not so many years ago and although they were not buying UK players (not good enough!) they WERE buying from almost every other country! Did we hear any moans and groans then? No we did not so why is Blatter on his ‘high-horse’ now?
There is nothing basically wrong with the current system and in a ’supply and demand’ market, money talks and the Premiership has the money! If other countries want to compete then let them reorganise how they promote football like the tv companies have in the UK, make their games more watchable and saleable then we will have a level playing field but to restrict countries to a certain number of ‘home-grown’ players is a non-starter in my book. Who will be able to pay the greatly inflated prices for a small minority of top class English players? The big 4 of course but who else? So what benefit would that be to the English game or to any other countries domestic leagues for that matter? All it would achieve is to remove one problem but to create another!
I don’t have an answer to this situation only that I cannot see Blatter’s idea being workable nor will any countries’ leagues or their teams be in agreement with it BUT thankfully under the present European laws it will never happen anyway and I hope it never does!
a more workable idea would be a cap on the number of schoolboys the most successful clubs could take on. if clubs were only able to recruit from schools in their own catchment area 1. it would create more local interest 2.there would be a fairer share of talent 3. young players would learn in real competative football. the present system where the big boys hoover up the cream of the crop and then smaller clubs are obliged to loan up and coming talent totally sucks
I think you must be a fan of one of the big four , i think this is an excellent idea and should be implemented as soon as possible.
Surley the idea is to make the premier league more competitive. The influx of foreign players is not for the love of the game but for the money, so adding a wage cap is also a good idea.
I dont think it would have an adverse affect on our level of football and infact would probably produce a better game for the fans to watch.
Remember our great teams built on solid English play, Wolves ,the pioneers of European football, Tottenham, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, and of course 1966 . How many foreign players were involved in this era.
Its boring now, same teams year in year out, although id love Wolves to playing in the premier league, the championship is far more exiting, and we would only be fighting to stay in the premiership for the money as the chances of finishing in the top six would be minimal for at least 6 years.
Ditch the business bring the game back!
A good idea in principle, but it would just increase the gulf between the top 4 and the rest of us. As a West Brom fan i wouldn’t like to see it as we would no longer be able to buy the bargains from on the continent.
A better idea is similar the Scottish plan - Something along the lines of maybe increasing the substitutes but having at least 2 english players under 23 in the matchday squad. This would increase the number of english players involved at the highest level and leave it in the hands of the players to challenge and up their game to challenge for a starting place. Once players are over 23 then there will have to be more younger players bought in.
It looks good to me, agree?
European football has made a rod for its own back with some of the legislation in place.
We CAN’T stop players moving from club to club, country to country and we CAN’T enforce wage capping - this would all be seen as a restriction of trade by the G8 (12 clubs? and they footballers are thick!) and with their resources and influence would probably win any court case challenging this.
The big teams will never sign up for this because they know their influence in football is too high and they would not want to pass up on the next Ronaldinho or Kaka.
The European Cup was hoisted up by Man U who have alot of British and Irish players on their books so it is still possible with out this rule in place.
I support Wolves but the current rebirth of Villa is interesting - especially with the number of British/Irish players they have - with more on the way if O’Neill has his way.
I do not believe this rule is needed to improve the national game.
The managers of the two teams above are British, employ alot of British players and get success from the teams they put out.
The real change needs to come from changes happening in management and coaching in this country - top to bottom.
I understand what Blatter is trying to achieve, but he is going after the wrong thing. The problem we have is that the clubs that often find and develop these youngsters are the lower league clubs - Crewe have a great history for doing it and Liverpool have pulled several gems from Tranmere. These clubs were kept going by finding this talent, developing it to a level and then selling them to one of the top flight clubs. Unfortunately, the top flight clubs are now unwilling to take a risk on these ‘untried’ youngsters and instead prefer to shell out big money on proven talent from across the world. The investment is bigger, but the risk much smaller.
The result? Increasing numbers of lower league clubs going bust as they struggle to generate income, relegated Prem teams needing ‘parachute’ money to balance the books until they can level things out and the gap between the Prem and the lower leagues getting bigger by the season.
So how do we sort it out? TV money has been the cause and could be the saviour. When ITV Digital went belly up, the TV funding for the lower league clubs that had reduced the imbalance disappeared (and almost took several clubs with it). Sky continued to fund the Prem at an increasing rate and practically ignored the lower leagues, increasing the imbalance to a phenomenal rate. That is what needs to be addressed.
The solution? Make Sky split the money between the leagues and each club in the league gets the same money, regardless of how many games are shown. For example, there’s £100 million available for a season and you split it Prem £40M, Champ £25M, League 1 £20M, League 2 £15M (I know I have suggested a higher proportion for the Prem but I am trying to be realistic about operating costs). This would level the field somewhat between the divisions and within them as well.
So Mr Blatter, you want to develop the national sides? Support the teams that are finding and giving the foundation of development to the youth – those in the lower leagues.
will this be legal under employment rules or is football beyond them
Bomber
A question for you and indeed the other bloggers.
What is your personal priority,
success for your club or national team ?
As far as i am concerned, it is no contest,
club first, every time.
If this legislation is passed, i believe it would widen the them and us gap in club football into an irretrievable chasm, the “big four” would still corner the market in the best
available players, English and foreign, whilst the rest of us who rely on inexpensive but quality imports ie, Koren Texieria may no longer be available to us.
Bomber……..AYE
11,bomber,aye, my mrs aye,(ouch)nicole aye,worcester aye,worcester mrs aye, boing boing
Terry Wills.
WBA Bomber: Yes I’ll be at the Vine on Friday, and on this subject if anyone coming along took photographs of the players celebrating on the pitch after winning the Championship at Loftus Road I’d love to see them?.
Would be interested in obtaining copies from fellow fans as a permanent souvenir at a price a heck of a lot cheaper than official photographs!
On the 6+ 5 question the fact is that whether supporters agree or not this legislation would never get past current European Law.
It would be deemed as a restriction of an individuals right to work wherever he desired.
i hate the bloke who’s introducing it with a passion but im sick of watching boring england, even when we win it’s never an exciting win. bringit in i say.
i say bring it in too,give us more of a level playing field,it might even help championship sides such as wolves if they ever get to the premiership boing boing
i think no 7 has some very good points. I also thinj blatter would not be so cocerned if it wasn’t english clubs starting to dominate!
He is only tackling the tip of the iceberg with his 6/5 rule. The premiership has been dominated by the big four for ages.H e wasnt worried about that! I have thought for a while that a cap on the number of players a club can hold would be a good idea.The big clubs can sign the top players but once they have, say 30 or less , they cant sign any more. other clubs could then sign any new talent. It would also stop the big clubs from signing eveyone who can kick a ball and loaning them to the smaller clubs, which seems to me like a monopoly. I think a cap on the money a team can spend is not that workable because if the money goes from the league , the players will follow and the premier was only set up to attract the players from the big european leagues.
This is definitely a big issue that needs addressing though or football is going to become more and more boring and predictable.
YES ITS A GREAT IDEA. THERE ALSO SHOULD BE A WAGE CAP
Jarrod….great blog mate. Probably your best !!! But God …what a topic !!! I think everything has gone too far down the road to make much change now. There’s too much money involved, too many fat cats etc etc. Personally I would like to see a cap on the number of foreigners (I do not class Wales, N. Ireland and Scotland as foreigners) in a team. The English clubs in the top tiers have to start producing good young homegrown talent from the academies. However if you read some of the smaller print of this 6 plus 5 idea there is a very grey area because if a foreign player came through an English academy spending 3 years between the age of 15 and 21 (I think) they would qualify as a ‘homegrown’ player….
I don’t want to ramble on too much but I think this problem started long before we had all these foreign imports. I can remember watching schoolboy and U18 and U21 internationals and some of the talent that was on display was awesome. There were some kids there that would these days be hailed as the new Ronaldhino. However as soon as they joined the big clubs all that talent was stifled because they had to fit into a system that rarely allowed for individual talent to shine. Yes there were a few like George Best who were encouraged but a lot of talent just disappeared without a trace and in my opinion it’s a case of what might have been.
Some brilliant points in here geents.
I’d love to say this is a good idea for the good of football, but apart from the employment laws etc. that are currently standing in it’s way, it’s still not going to work.
The reason I say this is due to the fact that if you look at the England V USA match last week, how many of the England team play for the top 4?
Brown, Cole, Ferdinand, Terry, Hargreaves, Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney just in the starting 11.
Does that imply to anyone else that the big 4 already have a monopoly on English talent?
If this rule comes in, it will just get worse, as they’ll need all of the top English players to further their ambitions.
Players like Ashton and Defoe would be snapped up straight away by the big 4 as replacements, despite being at a lower level than Tevez, Drogba, Torres etc.
To replace these players at places like Pompey, Everton and West Ham you’ll have players like Jonny Greening moving to established top 8 teams.
Where does that leave the Albion and the Wolves? Even further behind in a league that is not as good as it currently is!
It’d be great to say that youth systems would be developed further to fill the gap, but realistically, the top 4 would again be 1 step ahead due to their vast spending power. We’ve already lost 1 of our YTS guys this Summer to Pompey as he wants to move there to get more money…….aged 16!!
As has been suggested, a wage cap such as in Rugby League or the MLS would be better for football in general and hopefully if all of the top leagues are paying similar wages, it’s no longer about who’s paying the most money, but about football again.
To be honest though, I can’t see that happening either, as it’s not going to help the biggest clubs, so it will never be voted in (by them!)
Jarrod.
Very interesting blog. Especially as many of the replies have raised points that had never occured to me. My only comment is that I don’t think it will be allowed to happen because the EU and more importantly Sky won’t allow it. Mr Blather will have to think of something else, perhaps all English teams playing in blindfolds.
20 Forever.
I agree. I’ve felt alienated from the England team for a long time. Going back to Ron Greenwood saying at the time that the local campaign for Bryan Robson to be in the England squad was ‘parochial’ then when he joined ManU he was transformed overnight into an England player. The same can be said of many of the 1981 Villa squad and Steve Bull, who was very grudgingly given a chance before being ditched at the first opportunity. The England team is a private party and the likes of us are definitely not on the guest list.
15 Gold and black.
Very interesting Freudian slip. You’d like Wolves in the prem but the championship is more exiting.
Finally Jarrod. Hope to make it Friday. I’m at work until eight thirty and therefore realise that most will be incoherant (or should I say more incoherant than normal) by the time I get there. Keep on blogging. As Eddie Kendrick almost said.
Its just sour grapes from the rest of the European leagues. They cant get the best players in the world anymore and they are struggling to compete AGAIN with the English clubs and they dont like it. Man U 5-0 Roma!
Remember before the Prem, all English clubs were banned from europe for six years for reasons we are all aware, and enevitably it took along time for the English clubs to climb back to the standard Liverpool, Forest, Villa etc had previously set. Now we are the strongest force again UEFA are trying to handicap us.
Regarding the England national side, forget it, they are another Spain, we still wont win a jot unless we take the pressure out of the National team and ignore the tabloids. For me an English manager would be a better way forward. There are plenty of good English players and if the FA have to look in the Championship for them then great, the championship is now one of the strongest leagues in the world too.
Fielding 5+ English players will destroy the quality and interest in the World League that is the Premiership.
If the best players from all around the world dont play in the Prem, then it will not get watched by supporters all over the world and then goodbye Rupert Murdock!
AYE but if anyone took pictures of the players celebrating on the pitch I do not want to see them. Come on chaps, move on!!
30 Sandwell massive ??…..agree with a lot of what you say but I’m not sure about your last point that if the best players don’t play in the prem. This all boils down to waht fans (true fans)are. Are they supporting a club just beacause they’re doing well and have the best players or like me and many thousands of others do they love their club for what it is ? Let’s face it if we didn’t have those fans, the likes of BreretonWolf, Shatpank,Debenham, Happy, Bomber, Terry we wouldn’t have Wolves or WBA because they wouldn’t exist.
Would it be so bad to see some of the obscene money now in football go away ? It would have an impact to start with yes but football the game would go on and the fans would still turn up. Club vs Country ? I think most fans would take club first but wouldn’t it be just great for the Nation to have a national team to be proud of ? Just to play Devil’s Advocate…what about a Grat Britain side ? Hang on, hang on….. ok got the flak jacket and metal helmet on…ready for all you can throw at me !!!!
i got oads of pics of me celebrating in the pub,shall i bring them along,boing boing
Terry…. wish I was coming to this party !!
if the 6/5 is brought in ,it will only be done gradually anyway, i would like to see more home grown talent coming through as its tough on the young english players these days making a break through cos of the foriegn players…HAVIN A PARTY AND BOMBERS BUYING THE BEER,,IN STYLE OF COURSE,,,OOOOOOOOH YES..
32 Filtonwolf (Bristol), no flak just a comment.
To have a GB side would cause severe problems to the Scots, Irish and Welsh. Just think about a possible side, who would you have in it?
The English would dominate because there are more English players than the others and certainly of a better quality!
Just my opinion!
Pretty boy.
Bring the photos if you so desire (!), but i’d rather see those of the players!
Cheers
Terry.
As an aside,
it appears the people on this thread that agree with limiting foreign players, are making an assumption that the national team will eventually
benefit from such a move.
Your place of birth is not, and never was, a benchmark to how talented you are destined to be.
The problem lies within our coaching, it seems any raw talent, rather than being nurtured is nullified by a negative, lets make sure we dont lose mentality of coaching from grass roots level.
The FA also seem to have a penchant for employing equally negative tacticians.
Our qualifying group should have seen us progress,
did the other teams in the group have better players collectively ?…….NO
were the other teams in the group more expressive and better coached ?…….as far as i am concerned……an emphatic YES.
I think you need look no further than the huge
strides taken by the African nations during the last 15 years or so, using coaches whom did not employ the fear factor.
wbaforever
Club!! No issue!!
However when we sit here five days away from the start of a major international competition it annoys me that England are not in it.
Oh and just to let you know the Express and Star are sending a photographer to our party on Friday!! They took one look at Terrys photo (QPR away) and recognised the appeal to the readers, sex sells!!!!!!
filtonwolf
You are more than welcome to come to our bloggers party mate, malvernwolf is coming so you wont be the only one there drinking beer the bar staff have spat in!!!
If I recall right, the 80’s when English clubs dominated Europe there was a 3 foreigner rule. All home countries players except Eire could play for England as they had UK passports.
Liverpool dominated remember. After the English club ban look at AC Milan, they signed 3 world class Dutch players and built a team of quality homegrown players round them, admittedly some of those Italians were world class too.
However I don’t see how the 6+5 will improve the national team. It all comes down to the talent available and standard of coaching.
Interesting blog as usual Jarrod.
I should have said play for English clubs.
36. James…..fully agree mate. but just think if we’d had the likes of Giggs on the wing….keane in the forwards…… etc etc. It’s a big ask I know but you have to wonder
40. Bomber would love to come but the idea of someone gobbin’ in me beer doesn’t appeal mate !! Seriously though if I could make it I would and I think I’d enjoy it (apart from said gobbin !!)
Cheers mate…one day…one day
It seems to me that whatever rules are brought in, the major clubs will find loopholes around them. For instance, what is a home grown player? What is the time limit they have to be at the club? Would Fabregas be included as he was at Arsenal at an early age. Maybe a home grown player should be classified as English. However, England just doesn’t seem to produce the ball players like the foreigners so our league may deteriorate. I think we should put more emphasis on youngsters developing their skills rather than lording the ones that hare around the pitch like maniacs.
shall i bring my holiday snaps as well you can see me in my speedos,but your not to show them the girls else the party will turn wild,FILTON YOUR WELCOME TO COME N SEE US PARTYING YOU CAN JOIN IN BOING BOING
Bomber - when i read the headline “Six + five - good or bad idea”? I thought ToMo had announced his formation plan for next season - then i realised that he would never play just 5 up front !!
Can’t really add to the topic withpout getting repetitive - although their are some very well thought out comments.
AYE for friday (of course).
Terry….I’m honoured mate (seriously). That’s the first time you’ve used my proper name, though Flinty has got a certain ring to it !! Like I said to Bomber if I could have made it I might just have been tempted….but those photos in the speedos…dunno about that mate !! You, and worcester and happy and bomber all enjoy yourselves you earned it. Have a couple for me as we !!
Having said i won’t add to the blog, something has just occured to me….
When, in recent years, the world cup was won by france, Italy and Brazil - how many of their players actually played football in their native country ?
I would suggest that it wasn’t many.
Also, why do we “export” so few players to other countries ? You can almost name all successful british exports on ten fingers…
I’m not sure if this has any relevence on our lack of national success - but its noticable that the nations that tend to do well do export more players - who then gain a wealth of experience from their adoptive countries.
Its the same with managers - other than venables and Bobby Robson there are almost no british managers who have worked abroad successfully… coinsidence ??
HB
Italy won the world cup with all of their players playing in their domestic league!!
However your point is a valid one when looking at France and even more so Brazil.
Bomber…also don’t forget that Italy introduced a quota on foreign players. It set them back a couple of years but after that their football improved dramatically.
Thanks for the warning Bomber, I shall bring my own
Yeah - but they also bung the refs too so they don’t count !!
Dear MOD - you can print this cos that aint speculation - its fact.
Great idea, its not against any law as your not stopping them from working and getting payed, they can still play, but its just that they will sometimes have to be on the bench. They still get payed meaning its not against any laws in my opinion.
Also, someone who cant talk English cant be an English Teacher..its not against any laws!
the problem with our national team is
every player thinks they are better than they really are and are over paid drama queens.
what ever happened to pulling on the england shirt and wearing it with pride rather than how to spend 100 k on cars.
all of a sudden its club before country and unless that changes sooner rather than later then as a nation england i fell will never win anything.