Europe Gives the Boot to Fifa Quota Plan

The European commission have stated that the plan by Fifa to impose restrictions on foreign players playing in the European league is in breach of the law. There has long been the debate that two many foreign imports ruin the national game of the respective leagues. One fact to back this up is that the new England manager Fabio Capello only has a choice of 34% of players who are English who play in Premier League football shirts. In La Liga (Spain) this figure is slightly higher as well as in Italy.

Many managers have argued that with all the foreign imports it is harder for home grown players to break through in to a Premiership football shirt, and thus having a negative affect on the national teams fortunes. The counter argument to this however is that if a player is good enough and possesses the skills, they are likely to make it into the big time regardless of the amount of foreign players that stand in their way.

Fifa is considering the 6+5 rule, whereby ensuring that at least 6 players in the starting line up are from the host country. Vladimir Spidla, Europe’s commissioner for equal opportunities has however said that “we are giving the red card to the 6+5 rule”. With this said, an agreement seems unlikely. There is however differences in the explanation of home grown players from Uefa and Fifa. Uefa currently state that a home grown player is someone who has been trained up by the individual club for a minimum of 3 years between the ages of 15 and 23.

With the EU unlikely to accept this, there is hope that an exception can be made. Arsenals are a club in the Premiership which have come under media scrutiny in past seasons for playing some matches without an Englishmen in the starting line up.

This argument will always divide opinion. On the one hand if a player is good enough to be world class then he will always make it to the top and the huge influx of foreign players actually filters out those players who would have had an average career but nothing more. However with the large influx of foreign players leaving behind their European football shirts for the Premier League, it may hamper the development of home grown players who mature a lot later in their career and play their best football in their latter years.