I apologize if this has already been answered as I only read the first and last page in this thread. Rafa Benitez has been mentioning needing 8 homegrown players in the future. What is he on about? Thanks in advance guys.
That is for a team's Champions League squad. Each squad must have a certain amount of home-grown and locally trained players in their squad. I think that at the moment it is 3 and 7 respectively.
Thanks for reply. How long has this been a rule for? Its news to me. What does "locally-trained" mean? For example, can Liverpool field a player from London? From Scotland/Ireland?
I think that locally trained means that the player has been trained in England for a few years below the age of 18? (correct me if im wrong). Eg. Harry Kewell counted as a locally trained player given he was playing in England from the age of 15/16.
im all for any rule limiting foriegns in europe. whatever will help, to stop greedy clubs from buying whoever they want.
Define greedy clubs? The wealthiest clubs will still buy the best talent, whether or not the rule goes into effect.
Chances are you'll get better coaching and development at Man Utd then say at Stoke... and if there are restrictions on foreigners chances there will be less competition for that spot at Man Utds academies. With all these foreigners gone, it won't make the gap between the minor clubs and the really big ones any smaller. It'll just mean the most promising domestic talents move up another step on the ladder and the small clubs get more money. Which means the small clubs can spend more money on coaching and facilities and make more talents. All this while the second tier foreigners become cheaper and more available for minor clubs.
The quality of the players they will be playing with and against will be worse hence the development of the player drops.
I seriously doubt that. Not every player in your squad has to be a Ronaldo or a Terry for players to develop to their potential. What you need is good coaching, good teachers and good facilities and everything will work out as it should.
In just about every sport imaginable the refrain is that to be the best, you have to play the best. If you limit quality opposition, you're just saying that the best English players in the prem get to pit their skills against more championship-calibre players. Don't see where that will lead to any results that might be seen as positive.
This isn't true. All of the top teams will still have their Drogbas, Ronaldos, Robinhos, etc. It'll just be the weaker foreigners that get dropped and replaced by native players. Then, you get native players playing against top talent that helps them improve better - as opposed to the same native players either being relegated to the bench, or in lower leagues because foreigners were previously occupying their spots on top teams. Russia has been using the 6+5 rule for a few years now and it has already helped them tremendously. Their appearance in the 2008 Euro Cup Semifinals and the use of the 6+5 rule in their domestic league are certainly linked!
How then do you explain the fact that the Prem League aren't even close in developing young domestic talents compared with say, Brasil, Holland and Italy? PL arguably has the most talent, but all of it is bought from other countries. Shouldn't it be the other way around if training with all these PL people is so damn developmental. I think actually playing and being well coached and motivated is what brings out talent. Who you play against is overrated in this sense. Fabregas would be just as great today if Wenger had been his coach at Auxerre. We just wouldn't know about him as much. Put 1000 of the worlds best coaches in Nigeria and they'd rule the football world within 20 years. Sending them all our Ronaldos and Terrys and Del Pieros to play in their leagues wouldn't help that much. If anything at all.
Many of the best Dutch and Brazilian players play overseas. I will grant you most of the Italians stay at home, but that doesn't prove anything. A correlation does not indicate a cause/effect relationship. To wit: MLS playerrs are primarily American. Can we expect the US to become a world power now? If every nation with a domestic league had a similar rule, could we expect the FIFA rankings to read: 1. Everybody? The problem is that the youth system in England is not terribly good. I'm not talking at a club level, it's a mess at a national level. There was an article about Arsenal recently that talked about how kids who start playing regularly at 5 end up as better players than those who start at 7 (note: the point of the article was not to discuss the question of nationality). In other words, by the time the kids get into the club system, it's too late. Now regarding Fabregas, I disagree with you. Playing against better competition makes you better. It's a pretty accepted maxim in sports. Would Fabregas still be great with great coaching at Auxerre? No question. As good, no chance. Football is a team game and you need to play with good teammates and good opponents to make you better. Now humor me for a moment...why should the Prem League be responsible for developing talent for the national team?
Obviously not. As you said above, most of the talents from Brasil do play in other countries. But the talent is developed from a very early age and all this happens before they move abroad. With few exceptions of course. The teams don't care where a young player comes from. They would be forced to care if this rule was implemented. Which is the point of the whole thing isn't it? I can't imagine that being true. You can become a great player even if you don't start playing organised football before age 7. Maybe I was exaggerrating a bit. But who you play against is less important then actually getting to play. The talent is always there from a very early age. What you need is playing and coaching. The talent in France is good enough. I don't think it is their responsibility. Atleast not until the FA actually pay the clubs to do so. I don't know the relationship between the clubs and the FA in this matter. But what FIFA/UEFA want is England to be competitive. It's important to them and it's important to football. I can't stand Three Lions but I missed them at the Euros. It's not the same without them. Plus I think without foreigner restrictions it'll be too easy for Chelsea and now Man City to flat out buy championships. That's not how it should be.
english coaching is changing and we will see the fruits of brookings labour in the next decade i hope...otherwise its still screwed
Well, then you'd also need to change rules allowing when clubs are allowed to sign kids and conceivably expand their catchment areas as well. I didn't invent the other article I referenced. I agree you can still develop as a player if you start at a later age but, all else being equal, the earlier you start refining your skills, the better technique you will acquire. . Well, there are more foreign coaches, including Capello. Coaching is part of the equation, but there is more to it. Players make loads of money and they (perhaps rightly) care more about the club that pays them their wages than the national team. A agree with you that it's not the clubs' job to develop the England squad, though I don't think the FA agrees with us (perhaps a tad of self-interest there?). I just don't see how restricting foreigners helps the England squad. The best England players already play in the Prem and they get to test themselves against the best players in the world. Were you to ship out half the foreigners and import a bunch of Englishmen from the Championship, all you'd have is less talent in the Prem, not a better England team.
Sure why not. I like the rule that you can only sign local kids though. That'll spread the talent around and that's good for the game. The most important part of developing a player is coaching and playing. I have two questions: 1) Do you not agree that English players will get to play more if there are restrictions on foreigners? 2) Do you think SWP has gotten better sitting on Chelseas bench then if he had been playing regularly?
There will be more Englishmen in the Prem, so there will be more playing in the Prem. But there wont be more playing per se (or at best, a minimal increase) because those that are now in the Prem will just have moved up a notch from the Championship where they were playing. And if opposition doesn't matter, why should anyone care if they are playing in the Championship or teh Prem? I honestly can't answer #2 because he hasn't played very much and it's therefore hard to rate his progress, but I suspect not. Mind you that was his decision to make and he clearly went for £ over playing time. But again, if clubs don't really owe anything to the national team, what does it matter whether a particular player/players improves? I support England in Europe, but the notion that billion dollar corporations are supposed to support a group of millionaires that often ruin their assets (player injuries/fatigue) is simply mind-blowing. Rather than quick-fix gimmicks, representatives from all parties need to sit down and hash things out. Joke tourneys like the Super Cup and Club World Championship don't help with fixture congestion, nor do meaningless friendlies. Also, they should look at modifying tournament qualifying so that higher-ranked nations get some form of a "bye" so that they can play fewer games (not necessarily automatic entry, but they'd need to play fewer games to win entry).
Anybody who can't see that a successful England side is beneficial to English football clubs is probably new to the game. In the late eighties English football was dead on it's feet, nobody was into it and, if you were, you were too embarressed to talk about it. Italia '90 changed all that, everybody was watching, Euro 96 took it to another level, where do you think all these mobile phone chunttering, sandwich munching idiots that fill up premier league grounds come from?
Anybody who can't see that, while England missed Euro 2008 (and has otherwise been treading water internationally), the Prem is raking in record revenues doesn't know how to read financial numbers.