too many foreigners??

Discussion in 'Premier League' started by OrientFan, Sep 7, 2007.

  1. OrientFan

    OrientFan Member

    Nov 13, 2005
    Orlando/London
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    It began with a few comments from a smattering of fans, its growing bigger every week and more and more poeple are agreeing, we have now had Sir trevor and Sir Bobby and many others concerned about the amount of foreign players in the English game.

    what say you?

    I for one wouild like to see quotas, say no more than 15 percent of your team can be foreign born.
     
  2. alain_9510

    alain_9510 New Member

    Nov 26, 2006
    Seattle
    If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.
     
  3. vilafria

    vilafria Member+

    Jun 2, 2005
    Some people don't drink wine. :)
     
  4. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    How would you field 1.65 people?
     
  5. vilafria

    vilafria Member+

    Jun 2, 2005
    ( %) I think it refers to the total of signed players, between 20 and 30 .
     
  6. alain_9510

    alain_9510 New Member

    Nov 26, 2006
    Seattle
    What about Scottish or Irish players? What about players who are foreign-born, but have an English passport?
     
  7. footballone-redded

    Aug 13, 2007
    I don't think there are too many foreigners in EPL. Foreigners help upgrade the level of football in EPL.
     
  8. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Those are entirely separare points. You can have a positive impact from foreign players, and too many foreign players.

    Bottom line is that only the top echelon of foreign signings (the top 15%, if you will ...) do anything significant to the level of play. The rest are signed for economic and practical reasons that do little or nothing for the general standard of play and, in most cases, do harm the development of local talent. It's this that people are mostly thinking of when they start this debate. The problem is that it's rarely articulated well and so people can easily dismiss it as small-minded or xenophobic.

    I don't believe we should restrict the import of foreigners, but not for footballing reasons. If we want to live in a world of free and fair economic circumstances (or as close to such conditions as we can realistically get) then restrictions of trade and distortion of markets of this kind cannot be allowed. In more purely footballing terms, it would also be pretty difficult to get the practicalities of a restriction right, especially here in the UK where we have the unique difference of one political entity being recognised as four legally separate nations by FIFA.
     
  9. Ash's Boomstick

    Ash's Boomstick New Member

    Aug 31, 2007
    I hate this bollocks of blaming foreigners for the England team being shite, if it's all their fault how is it we were still shite in the 70' and 80's then:confused:
     
  10. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Plus, in actual fact the England team is better now than it has been for well over a generation and the crop of players available to the England side is now of a higher quality than it has been for ages.
     
  11. leg_breaker

    leg_breaker Member

    Dec 23, 2005
    There are only so many decent English players to go around. Have a look in the Championship, and ask yourself if you want hundreds of players like that in the Premiership.
     
  12. Tunny

    Tunny New Member

    Aug 6, 2007
    If the English guys are good enough, they'll come through. It's all about quality not numbers.
     
  13. pookspur

    pookspur Moderator
    Staff Member

    Nov 3, 2001
    Indiana
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    hell, it's not just the game - it's all of england!! foreigners everywhere!! it's friggin' maddening. always with their silly accents, and such. saying things like 'cheers' instead of 'thank you'. calling 'trucks' 'lorries', and stupid foreign crap like that. driving on the wrong side of the road, for fuck's sake!!

    hell yes, there are too many foreigners. if it wasn't for the McDonald's on every other corner, i'd swear i was on Mars.
     
  14. BobanFan

    BobanFan Member+

    Jun 28, 2007
    Club:
    AC Milan
    I don't think you can stop players from the EU from signing? In Italy and Spain where they still have a quota, but it only relates to non-EU players. If the EU keeps on expanding then there's going to be even more players to choose from. I, personally, do think there are too many average foreigners in the premier league who are signed because they are cheaper, but at the end of the day it all comes down to budgets.
     
  15. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Well, not in theory. Although if a national association were to decide to be very stringent then they could invoke aspects of European law that have also been used to restrict, for instance, the number of people from Poland who can work in the UK, etc. Those were put in place for accession talks, but could presumably be extended to a broader remit by any country willing to tough it out through the inevitable shitstorm it would cause.

    Precisely. A lot of foreigners are here not because they are better than their local alternatives but because they are cheaper. Ironically, I think the new-ish trend of buying even young players from abroad will improve this situation as it will inevitably force the price of young English talent down. Clubs that used to compete with each other to sell their young academy stars to Premiership clubs are now competing on a global basis. Eventually, this will have a "trickle-up" effect that ensures all English players are priced more reasonably than they currently are. This, in turn, may even affect the propensity for buying average foreigners instead of local players at the highest level.
     
  16. YankBastard

    YankBastard Na Na Na Na NANANANAAA!

    Jun 18, 2005
    Estados Unidos
    Club:
    AS Roma
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Fifteen percent? No, maybe fifty percent. That sounds good.
     
  17. ArtVandelayLFC

    ArtVandelayLFC New Member

    Jul 30, 2007
    I've got a couple of thoughts on this subject (although I'm not English FWIW). First of all, I think it's really illogical and inaccurate to say that English players aren't being developed properly because there are so many foreigners. In actuality, the reverse is more accurate: there are so many foreigners because English players aren't being developed properly. The bottom line is that if English players are good enough, or show enough promise, clubs will give them a chance, as the clubs' sole interest is putting as much talent on the pitch as possible so they can maximize their chances of success.

    I really think placing a quota on foreigners in the EPL would have a completely opposite effect from what proponents of such a policy think would happen. You wouldn't be doing English players any favors in the long run by restricting non-English players from playing in the Premiership, because English players wouldn't have as much incentive for putting in as much hard work and dedication as possible towards becoming better footballers. Right now, an English player's mindset is "I better work my ass off if I want to get/keep a place in the side over all these foreigners." If you introduce a quota, suddenly that player's got a lot more leverage over the club in terms of keeping his place as well as contract negotiations, and it becomes a lot easier for him to just rest on his laurels.

    The idea that placing a quota on foreigners would result in better domestic players is like the economic idea that restricting competition from foreign companies would result in better domestic companies; at first glance both ideas might make sense, but once you examine them a bit more closely, they both start to unravel.
     
  18. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    No, those aren't contingent thoughts. You're misunderstanding the premise that some English football fans are putting forward when they say "foreign imports are hurting the development of local talent".

    The bottom line is that it is now cheaper to buy an established player, say an African midfielder at a middling Ligue Un club for example, than it is to develop a player from scratch through the Academy system. Cheaper both in terms of simple developmental time, cost and effort - and cheaper in terms of risk. The financial knife-edge that all but a few clubs in the league structure exist on means that short-termism is the single most significant blight on this situation: a club will readily spend £2m on a player like our example above if it means they can slot straight into the first team squad and be reasonably certain of providing at least some value. A club will be much more hesitant to fill that first team slot with a youngster who, through exposure to that level of play, will either make it or sink like a stone. What this means, by extension, is that only the very best youngsters, the ones you know will make it, will get the chance to make that step. That alone "hurts the development of local talent" because only dead cert even get the chance to try. Then, on top of that, you've got the fact that many of the first team squad places that used to be taken by young talent (and still are in lower levels of the game) are filled by short-term, instant impact, cheap players from abroad.

    See above. It's not that simple. It's not about raw talent anymore, it's about an ability to have an immediately measurable impact on the team's current performances. A lot of clubs don't have the time to give promising youngsters a chance because even a third of a season of such experimenting can send you towards a trap-door that nowadays empties your wallet of as much as £40m.

    I'm against quotas on foreign players, but I'm also not naive enough to believe that the foreign "competition" is universally causing an increase in standards for all local talent. It's not. In most cases it's stifling it. Only in the cases of young English players who were going to make it anyway can you reasonably argue that the presence of similarly talented foreigners is beneficial to them and to the overall level of the game. The issue of sub-standard but tactically and financially convenient foreign buys is not addressed by that reality.
     
  19. vilafria

    vilafria Member+

    Jun 2, 2005
    But what about the fairly recent Fifa or Uefa ( I forget which ) requirement that a certain percentage of a club's roster be from that club's academy ?
    In the long run, clubs have to face up to it, don't they?
     
  20. BobanFan

    BobanFan Member+

    Jun 28, 2007
    Club:
    AC Milan
    The clubs will buy the best foreign players aged 18 or under so that if they are good enough when they get older they'll then qualify. It's a bit of a flawed rule but it's UEFA we're talking about so what do you expect:rolleyes:.
     
  21. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    If memory serves, that only applies to the European competition squads which clubs submit at the end of August and again in January, for that season's European competitions. So it has a negligible impact on the wider problem. Besides (and again, I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly) I don't even know if it's been ratified and implemented.
     
  22. vilafria

    vilafria Member+

    Jun 2, 2005
    OK . They'll meet the requirement by "forming" foreign players, but doesn't that beat the purpose of saving money { by bying players already mature and "formed" (Using Matt Clark's theory )} ?
     
  23. vilafria

    vilafria Member+

    Jun 2, 2005

    I thought it was, but you may be correct. I sense a search coming up from an enterprising BS member :)
     
  24. leg_breaker

    leg_breaker Member

    Dec 23, 2005
    In the Champions League you need about four players trained at that club in the squad. You don't even need to put them on the bench, just name them at the start of the season.
     
  25. CaptVimes

    CaptVimes New Member

    Jun 12, 2006
    Not as simple as that:

    There are two lists under which players can be registered. Which is why Real Madrid have 36 odd registered and Chelsea only 23 (as they havent got enough "locally trained players" or list B players that would enable them to get up to 26 so they have a smaller squad than most this year. Next year the "locally trained players" goes up to 8.

    Conditions for Registration: List A
    17.08 No club may have more than 25 players on List A during the season. As a
    minimum, places 20 to 25 on List A (six places) are reserved exclusively for
    “locally trained players” and no club may have more than three “associationtrained
    players” listed in places 20 to 25 on List A. List A must specify the six
    players who qualify as being “locally trained”, as well as whether they are
    “club-trained” or “association-trained”. The possible combinations that enable
    clubs to comply with the List A requirements are set out in Annex VIII.
    17.09 A “locally trained player” is either a “club-trained player” or an “associationtrained
    player”.
    17.10 A “club-trained player” is a player who – irrespective of his nationality and
    age – has been registered with his current club for a period, continuous or
    not, of three entire seasons (i.e. a period starting with the first official match
    of the relevant national championship and ending with the last official match
    of that relevant national championship) or of 36 months between the age of
    15 (or the start of the season during which the player turns 15) and 21 (or the
    end of the season during which the player turns 21).
    17.11 An “association-trained player” is a player who – irrespective of his nationality
    and age – has been registered with a club or with other clubs affiliated to the
    same national association as that of his current club for a period, continuous
    or not, of three entire seasons or of 36 months between the age of 15 (or thestart of the season during which the player turns 15) and 21 (or the end of the season during which the player turns 21).
    17.12 If a club has fewer than six locally trained players in its squad (i.e. in places
    20 to 25 on List A), then the maximum number of players on List A is
    reduced accordingly. Furthermore, if a club lists a player in places 20 to 25
    on List A who does not fulfil the conditions set out in this article, that player is
    not eligible to participate for the club in the UEFA club competition(s) in
    question and the club is unable to replace him on List A.

    Conditions for registration: List B
    17.13 Each club is entitled to register an unlimited number of players on List B
    during the season.
    17.14 A player may be registered on List B if he is born on or after 1 January 1986
    and has been eligible to play for the club concerned for any uninterrupted
    period of two years since his 15th birthday by the time he is registered with
    UEFA.


    Trevor Brooking needs to look closer to home. The constant ignorant notion that you can get round European law is ignorant and getting beyond stupid. Bosman was years ago, UEFA lost the court case rather than compensate a player it is now history. A club like Arsenal can recruit from all over the world for a player 18+ (work permit permitting) and from the EU for 16+ with no restrictions. That is a big pool of players. However to recruit an English player the club would have to pick from the academy players restricted to players living within 1 hour of the academy. A good English player of say 14 living in Maidstone say would now have to wait till they are 16 before they could have a chance of moving to Liverpool or Chelsea for instance and then they would be competing with the whole of Europe for the places and a pretty hefty transfer fee on top.

    I am also sure that premiership clubs would fund a FA academy that they had to abandon if they would benefit from it somehow. Some kind of draft system from it maybe. A number of clubs fund other Adademys worldwide for the chance of 1 or 2 players Ajax in South Africa for instance and Arsenal in Thailand.
     

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