Sepp Blatter wants there to be six home-grown players in each European side and intends to impose what is known as the six-plus-five rule by 2011.

Under this rule at least six of your starting eleven must be eligible to play for the national team.

Now this would not be a major stumbling block for Aston Villa as we pretty much stick to the six-plus-five-rule anyway but it could prove to be a disaster for the majority of the Premier League especially the 'Big Four'.

I don't have the stats to hand on English players but I do know that in the first Premier League weekend of the 1992/3 season there were only 11 players from outside the UK, and that number only rose to 22 by the end of the campaign. If you look at last seasons stats this figure had risen to 280 non-UK players playing some part in the Premier League season.

Euros

Now you could argue that this has hindered the chances of the England team in that we didn't qualify for the European Championships but this is not the first time it has happened.

We have missed out on qualifying for these championships on no less than 5 occasions out of a possible 12 and have only made it passed the first round on three occasions two of which are since the beginning of the Premier League and the influx of the foreign players.

If you look to the same stats for the World Cup we have missed out on qualification 3 times in 1974, 1978 and 1994, again before the major influx of the foreigners to the English game.

You could also put forward the counter argument that the introduction of foreigners to the 'Best League in the world' has led to making the English teams a dominant force in Europe with an English team in the final for the last four seasons and that being capped this year with an all English final.

Once again though this doesn't have much backbone because between the 1976/7 and 1984/5 seasons there was only one European Cup final final which didn't feature an English side, this run only being stopped due to a five year ban on English teams entering European competitions.

Maybe the reason behind this rule is to bring back the national Identity of the big teams but with foreign owners and a worldwide fan base it will take a lot more than a simple foreign quota on how many players can be fielded in each match.

World Cups

Blatter's ten year record as FIFA president has been far from perfect. His handling of Mark Vivien Foe's death was atrocious and even though I agree with his comment that "Women footballers should wear tighter shorts" it is not the sort of comment the Head of FIFA should be saying.

It wasn't so long ago he was asking Gay footballers to come out.

He brought in the Silver goal rule which was later discontinued alongside the golden goal rule, he 'masterminded' the rule that players should be booked for over-celebrating and he also decided that national associations must now enforce immediate suspensions of all players sent off during a game, even if television replays offer compelling evidence of a player's innocence, a rule that the English FA has refused to follow, allowing appeals against straight red cards.

It seems to me that Sepp Blatter is once again trying to grab the headlines instead of concentrating on his job as FIFA President, but if the rule does go through I think they should bring it in for next season and see who wins the League, I've a sneaky suspicion it would be a first XI featuring a Danish centre half, a Dutch full back, a Bulgarian midfielder and a mountain of a Norwegian striker.

Comments (12)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

jerry said:

Neville, Brown, Ferdinand, Carrick, Hargreaves, Scholes, Rooney, throw in Van der sar, Evra, Vidic, Ronaldo, Tevez and Anderson and Villa would be up against it I'm afraid.

May 01, 2008

WezAVFC said:

this may be a stumbling block for villa because where do you think all the major teams would come looking for the top english talent (villa). Another point is that managers go foreign due tot he lack of youngsters making it at grass roots level for all the money in the game there is not enough decent coaches at that level or facilities i think they should invest heavily in grass roots!

May 01, 2008

Kiwivillan said:

This is contra to EU law and would never be allowed to happen. Shame for us

May 01, 2008

Damian said:

i'm no lawyer so this shouldn't be taken as gospel but if the governing body of the game, as elected in essence, by all the clubs in the game ... decide to change the rules of the game then EU laws have bugger all to do with it

May 01, 2008

MJ said:

i suppose it would be ok in an idle world but personally i dont think it would work. all i would succeed in doing is inflating an already rediculous britsh player price, so therefore the only clubs able to afford these players would be the big 4. the rest of the clubs would be fighting for lesser players and the rest of the prem would ultimately end up like the championship. this would then mean that the national side would be made up of players soley from the big 4 so if your club does nuture talant that said player would leave to fullfill his international ambitions. nuff said.

May 01, 2008

PaulE said:

Interesting article. As WesAVFC said, the top 4 would plunder our best players if this rule came in. We might get away with it if it came in after the transfer deadline, but I don't think it would benefit anyone in the long run.

May 01, 2008

villafandan said:

if they change the rules to introduce 50 minute halves, that would have bugger all to do with the EU. if they change the rules to discriminate against employment along nationality (read racial) lines i think you'll see how much it has to do with the EU. won't happen. blatter's wasting his and everyone else's time.

May 01, 2008

villafandan said:

chris, as your stats demonstrate, england have failed on the international stage before and after the influx of foreigners in our domestic leagues. blame for 1 trophy (gained on home soil) in nearly 60 years lies entirely with the english national set up. i don't know how many english players are in the prem, but i'd guess a couple of hundred (based on your 280 non-uk players). if that's not a big enough talent pool of players plying their trade in the world's best league to pick a 23 man squad to win a tournament then something is seriously wrong. and if anyone thinks for a second that blatter's motivation to install quotas on clubs has anything to do with england's abject failure on the international stage then they're deluding themselves.

May 01, 2008

kohoutek said:

Yeah, if it were implemented soon, Villa might very well have their stars plundered. Conversely, it might mean, as Damien suggests, that Villa would have a shout at becoming instant PL royalty, which would seem to offer a reason for the players to stay. But, yeah, Utd have a decent number of English players. While I have no love for them, I've preferred to see them win, among the top 4, as opposed to Arsenal. The national team's failures reflect the failure to develop young talent properly. Witness France's ascent in world football. More English players would be in the PL if England were developing more young footballers who can be composed on the ball, play one-touch football, have the proper vision, etc. If you cap the number of foreigners, the numbers would be made up by players that are inferior at the moment. The PL's overall quality would be diluted, and it wouldn't necessarily mean that the players would get better. Success for the England team lies in developing talent that can push its way into PL starting places. The one aspect where this breaks down is the top 4's stranglehold on CL places, meaning that only their English players get that experience. So, a cap doesn't help if we're talking PL starting places. But I suppose it might have an effect though if it upset the PL pecking order. As villafandan said, there should be enough English players to select a team. But England have had a habit of selecting the biggest names, which doesn't always add up to the best side.

May 01, 2008

AmericanVillan said:

I actually compiled a spreadsheet of all foreign-born players on Premier League clubs back in November and wrote a post on the matter. Let me know what you think. http://americanvillan.blogspot.com/2007/11/open-season.html Spreadsheet only is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pF1VU_Xm4bX2APByAkxKJEQ

May 01, 2008

villa_sheepshagger said:

If this is the case then Barry's 'pending transfer' out of Villa Park should be doubled in price as he is a top class English player.

May 02, 2008

mike s said:

Well if that happened it would be good for villa cos we've got class english players and we're still in the top 10 of english teams. Where as arsenal would fall completely. And that's only to name one team. we have players like barry aggy young gardner (moore) reo-coker carson and they are all english.

May 03, 2008

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

Add Comment