So last night I'm sitting with my grandad, who's something like 75, and we're chatting about Liverpool and the current season. Gramps had lived in Liverpool from the age of 6 to about 30, and can just about remember pre-war teams. As always with people his age, the chat turned into a things-were-better-back-in-the-day kind of conversation, and I was regaled with stories of Roger Hunt, Bill Shankly, and even Gordon Hodgson, although I think the last one was second-hand stories. At the end of the story, he bemoaned how most of the problems stem from the fact that "only two of our lads are actual homegrown players." This made me think of Rafa's recent comment about buying players from abroad because of the forbidding price tag of British ones, as well as FIFA's recent threat to limit the number of players on teams that weren't brought up by teams themselves. So this got me thinking about glory-days and whatnot, and our great teams of the late-80s that I can vaguely remember and suddenly, a strange thing occured to me. How many of those guys were actually Liverpool products. So I looked up the last great team, the one that won the title in 1990, and investigated. The result? Well, only ONE player on that team actually started his career with Liverpool. Gary Ablett. Gary-freaking-Ablett. The 1980s equivalent of Stephen Warnock with a dodgier haircut. Others? Well, they began their careers in places as diverse as Canada, Chester and Ayr. The most important players on that team, like Rush and Barnes, were bought as already well-established players. Hell, Barnes, at 24, was already an England international. Consider this in the light of fact that both our current captain and his deputy are Liverpudlians and had never played for other clubs. So, what is really the difference between now and then? The fact that instead of buying Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen, we buy Spaniars, Frenchmen and Finns? Are things really that different as far as development of players at big clubs goes? I don't think so. I think the key difference between then and now is that I could not imagine Liverpool players today who started their careers at Ayr United or Falkirk. I'm very interested to hear what others think about this. Is there really such a tremendous difference between signing players from SPL and La Liga?
oh, and BTW, the list of all the players who featured in more than 5 games last time we won the title and the clubs they started their careers with. Bruce Grobbelaar - Vancouver Whitecaps Stephen Nichol - Ayr United Gary Gillespie - Falkrik Gary Ablett - 'omegrown Alan Hansen - Partick David Burrows - WBA Steve Staunton - Dundalk FC Ronnie Whelan - Home Farm Barry Venison - Sunderland Ray Houghton - West Ham Ronny Rosenthal - Maccabi Haifa John Barnes - Watford Glenn Hysen - IFK Göteborg Jan Molby - Kolding Steve McMahon - Everton Peter Beardsley - Newcastle United Ian Rush - Chester
You mean, other than pricetag? I think that money is a huge reason why teams have started to look in other leagues for players. The English are highly overpriced. I mean, Charlton just bought Marcus ********ing Bent for £2.5m! That's ridiculous! You can get a much higher quality player for the same amount of money in one of the foreign leagues. Also, it takes a lot of time and money and effort to homegrow your own players. I don't think a lot of times have the patience or the time to wait, especially when there's an immediate need for a player of a certain position. Just my opinion.
True,but the only one who suffers from this situation is the English national team.Just ask Italy!!!To many foreign players limits the amount of young local players getting into the starting XI and hence reduce the amount of quality players available for the head coach.From liverpools point of view ,financialy its better to look abroad.But theres a problem there as well.Thats why i like/hate all the dumb rules the FA make while the transfers are made.(Specialy the south american players!!Just ask Mark Gonzalez) Home born players realy know what it means to wear the liverpool jersey,but sadly some of the players that come in from abroad dont.Thats why i think bringing up players is a must!!!Specialy local players.
Not that I disagree with the central point that English players can be overpriced, I think you could have chosen a better example. Unless you can name a foreign striker who is "much higher quality" than Bent and would cost no more than £2.5m. I can't think of any. In fact, if you look at some of the foreigners that have been brought in this transfer window, you've got a pretty strong case that it's not just English talent that is overpriced. How about £4.5m for that Zimbabwean that Portsmouth just signed? As to the main point of the thread, it's just one of those things that all football fans do - we are collectively responsible for this myth that back in the good old days all football clubs would be staffed by players who grew up within the shadows of the stadium and grew up to fulfill the dreams we had ourselves of one day representing the great club we grew up with. In Liverpool's case, it's particularly daft - the very formation of the club as a separate entity was driven by the wholesale import of Scottish footballers. If memory serves, the entire first-team squad were initially from places other than Liverpool. So if it's going on in 1892, then it's hardly surprising today.
Point taken. While I did in general mean that you can find better talent in other leagues for less or the same amount of money as Englishmen, my point about Marcus Bent is that there's no way in hell he should be going for that kind of money. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy about the £2m return on our "investment", I doubt we'd get that kind of fee from other leagues. The one Englishman who comes to mind as being grossly overpriced is Wright-Phillips, but I don't know if that's the result of him being English or if it's the result of the Russian revolution. I suppose that's another discussion, though.
How does having good foreign players, rather than less skilled local players, reduce the amount of quality players available?
I'm glad someone caught the actual point I was trying to make amidst all my rambling. The question I'm trying to raise is why some see this as a problem now, but they did not 20 years ago? As I pointed out, we'd never exactly produced homegrown players, aside from the brief period in the 90s that gave us Fowler, Macca, Owen, Gerrard and Carra, but no one said anything about it in the 80s. When we won the CL last year, there was all the talk of the Spaniards on the team, but did anyone talk about all the Scots in 1984? England's 1986 WC squad feature no players from Liverpool, at least to my knowledge, so it's not as if this is a new development either. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems quite hypocritical to say that there is somehow an innate difference between Spaniards and the Scots from a footballing standpoint. That even though the Scottish FA and the English FA are as separate as the English and Spanish one, and even though EPL and SPL are not related or linked, Spanish players are somehow "more foreign." This despite the closer integration of the EU and to some extent, what with their mickey mouse parliament and all, the distancing of Scotland. You could go even further and say that with the traditional Auld Rivalry and what not, signing Scottish players hurts the national team more than signing Spanish players.
Oh, and a good example of overpriced English players...Southampton apparently want between 12 and 15 million quid for Walcott....who's only 16.....and not THAT spectacular....and could turn into another Jermaine Pennant for all anyone knows...and you could get superb, devloped players from Argentina or wherever else for that kind of money.
That's an excellent question. It's my belief that good players, no matter what their provenence, should only help the quality of the whole. It makes homegrown players fight that much harder and lift their quality of play.
It's an issue of development. When he refers to "England," he's specifically talking about the U-21's and below. Good example: Scott Carson, who right now is our third-choice keeper, was signed by us last January from Leeds. There, he was the starter. Here, he's the number three man behind a Pole and a Spaniard. But he's also the main keeper for the English U-21's. The point is that the young players who are developing for the English national team aren't neccesarily getting football at the highest level. Now, I'm not old enough to know if that's always been the case, but as we speak, the majority of good, young English talent is either starting for reserve sides or football league teams. Whatever the case, you see very few U-21's regularly starting for Premiership sides (Darren Bent of Charlton is the only example I can think of). Obviously, player's develop on a steeper curve if they're playing against the teams of such quality as Chelsea or Liverpool, as opposed to Coventry and Crewe. But managers are unwilling to give youngsters any significant role in the first team side because of the relentless pressure to stay afloat in an increasingly deep league. So they turn to foreign players who already have experience, instead of trying to develop Scott Carson.
Even when I ramble on about Shankley's teams of the 60's. They brought in this foreign manager from Scotland and he of course brought in players who he could actually talk to without an interpretor. You know, Ian St. John, Rowdy Yeats and those guys...! The real success story for a home grown team though was Jock Stein's Celtic from 1967. Can you imagine a team today, any team that could field 10 players like Celtic's in that day, whose family homes were within 10 miles of the ground and one (the foreigner) who lived 30 miles away. Going out and winning the European Cup. They don't make them like they used to in my day ..
Carson was never the starter for Leeds. He was the backup to Neil Sullivan. I understand your point though. However, I don't think its the responsibility of the clubs to care about the English national team. There only concern is to build the best team possible. Without foreign players, the Premiership would be boring, and the English teams would have no chance of competing with the Spanish and Italian teams in Europe. The competition from foreign players makes the English players work harder and raise their games in order to get into the team. The players who are good enough make it at a young age (Owen, Gerrard, Rooney, etc). Players like Frank Lampard, John Terry, and Joe Cole have raised their game to a new level to keep their place in a team full of foriegners. The English national team is not suffering. They have a starting lineup full of world class players and have as good a chance in the World Cup as ever.
If playing first team football was that big of an issue, why would these young English players sign for clubs like Liverpool? Should we lower the club's standards just to give some English more playing time? It's not like they had no choice but to sign for LFC.
The answer is that many people in England don't think of Scots, Welshmen, and Irish people as foriegn. You all share similar culture, television, and different versions of the same language. You've fighting with each other for centuries but yet the sense of foreigness isn't there.
Typically, big clubs loan their youngsters out to football league sides, or they play in the reserves. It's not like they're going in thinking they won't get playing time, otherwise they wouldn't sign. They sign with Liverpool (or any big club) because once they gain a few year's of experience at a lower level, they have a spot waiting for them at a high-profile, successful club.
I mean let's be honest here. This isn't about football, it is about ethnocentrism. The only people besides the FA who care about this are people that more interested in seeing their ethnic "mirrors" on the field. Of course I am talking about people interested in the football aspects of this. Business, economy, sociology aside... You can't tell me that the average fan of a football club cares who [whatever ethnicity] plays for his team if they are winning - unless they have "other considerations".
kold_77_krush i don't think there's anything sinister going on here. I'm not even European but if someone asked me to name the foreign players in the current Liverpool team, Finnan's name wouldn't come out first. Wasn't there a time when players from Great Britain weren't considered foreign players by UEFA? They should get with the EU programme and only consider non-european players "foreign"
ok, heres my totally off topic conspiracy theory about buying players, period: Rafa, having realized some time ago that wanker, morono and the sir red-nose, bereft of ideas, were watching him like a hawk, has carefully set up vidic, emre and simoa as stalking horses and is now gleefully watching Chelski and Manure smash their wallets to pieces on overpriced shite. Meantime, agger isthe real deal at 5.8, and raffa will proceed to produce a good winger the others have overlooked, young and cheap and turning out excellent, now or in june. Like i always say, a man can dream can't he. Chelsea deserve no less farging iceholes. Bad for the game. Pricks.
I don't think it's an overt and devious thing, but nature [and history] suggests that fans will back players that look and/or talk like them. A while back I was thinking to myself of all the non-British players in the squad. I went through the line-up and counted them out in my head. This was like months ago... I completely forgot Hyypia was a non-British player. No one bemoans the fact that Riise, Hyypia, Hamann, Kewell are all foreigners. So why is it a sudden case around the league that we have Alonso, Garcia, Reina, Morientes? Just think about.
I have to take issue with Scott Carson being used as a negative example of Liverpool's purchasing policy. Scott Carson is only 20 years old. Most 20 year old goalkeepers are not first choice for European champions. As well, it's perfectly normal that players playing for England youth teams also play for their clubs youth teams. For the most part, U21 players are not teenage prodigies a la Rooney or Owen. And I don't think that youngsters are getting shut out of first-team opportunities either. I couldn't give you any stats, but based on my broad observations, I'd say that it's not that different from 15 years ago. I mean, the record for the youngest Premiership player keeps getting broken the last 4-5 years. Rooney, Milner, Lennon, soon Walcott...If anything, I'd suggest it was much harder breaking into established teams in the 80s and 70s. Oh, and a little stat...the average age of Liverpool 1984 CL winning team -- 26.7. 2005 CL winning team -- 26.5. Statistically insignificant difference, I'd say.
kold_77_krush well, a few years ago the french were all foreigners and people took issue with that as well. i suppose its probably a case of many people from one single country other than England/GB el_urchinio, there's not been that many European Champions (one every year!) but Ilka Casillas was already 1st choice keeper at Real when they were at the heights of their powers. Even Reina is still only 24
Maybe it's the amount of time with the club? Or maybe not, I don't know. But I think I almost subconciously think of players like Hyypia, Riise, and Hamann as more local because they've been there for a while. Though I don't really see much difference with the Spanish players... maybe because I'm not English anyway. And actually, you mentioned looking like the fan... I do look a bit Spanish, and probably think a bit more highly of Garcia than the average LFC supporter. ^just some odd thoughts.
And this why it is confusing, Finnan was born in Limerick, but spent his formative years with English football clubs and has lived in England more than he has in Eire. I might be mistaken but it appears you are saying he's from GB. Well, Eire has not been part of GB officially since 1922, and if asked the Irish they'd say since 1916.