Is it time to limit foreigners in the Prem?

[Howard_lfc]

Suppose - just suppose - we get Alves and Kuyt....
Add them to Aurelio, Gonzalez, Paletta, and Bellamy and you have six new players coming in - and only one of them is british. Only Gerrard, Carra, Fowler, Finnan and Warnock are brits also.

THe Chavs have bought, Shevchenko, Kallou, Bollock (and possibly A Cole to come).

Wenger has only bought a handful of brits in his time here :Wright, Upson, Jeffers....

And Utd have only Richardson, Fletcher and O'Shea come through since their influx of youth in the 90's - and none of them are definite first Xi material..

Those names etc are just off the top of my head but you can see that there's a distinct lack of homegrown talent within the four clubs mentioned.

I simply don't think there can be an arguement against limiting the number of foreign players in our league. In order for our national team to flourish (now that SGE has gone (thank feck for that !!!!)) it's imperative that we encourage our own talent to come through - and not go for the quick fix solution of buying johnny foreigner.

I would propose that every club in the prem MUST have a certain number of home grown (born here!!! not from the ivory coast and stuck in the youth and resses for a few years and calling 'them' home grown - Wenger) players in the match day squad in say 6-7 years time.

I'd also ban clubs buying players from abroad who are over 30 - and so looking to 'cash in' on OUR money just before they hang up their boots!

I'm sure that there are other proposals/ideas but I don't wanna make the post too long.......

I know there'll be opposition to this - I'd expect no less - but something has to be done for the good of English Football.

H

[univofchicago]

Suppose - just suppose - we get Alves and Kuyt....
Add them to Aurelio, Gonzalez, Paletta, and Bellamy and you have six new players coming in - and only one of them is british. Only Gerrard, Carra, Fowler, Finnan and Warnock are brits also.

THe Chavs have bought, Shevchenko, Kallou, Bollock (and possibly A Cole to come).

Wenger has only bought a handful of brits in his time here :Wright, Upson, Jeffers....

And Utd have only Richardson, Fletcher and O'Shea come through since their influx of youth in the 90's - and none of them are definite first Xi material..

Those names etc are just off the top of my head but you can see that there's a distinct lack of homegrown talent within the four clubs mentioned.

I simply don't think there can be an arguement against limiting the number of foreign players in our league. In order for our national team to flourish (now that SGE has gone (thank feck for that !!!!)) it's imperative that we encourage our own talent to come through - and not go for the quick fix solution of buying johnny foreigner.

I would propose that every club in the prem MUST have a certain number of home grown (born here!!! not from the ivory coast and stuck in the youth and resses for a few years and calling 'them' home grown - Wenger) players in the match day squad in say 6-7 years time.

I'd also ban clubs buying players from abroad who are over 30 - and so looking to 'cash in' on OUR money just before they hang up their boots!

I'm sure that there are other proposals/ideas but I don't wanna make the post too long.......

I know there'll be opposition to this - I'd expect no less - but something has to be done for the good of English Football.

H

I think there should be some sort of a limit. And I would think that most people are for it as well. The problem is that there are a lot of legal obstacles that prevent the football authorities from taking drastic actions. If anything, its going to be a gradual process.

Fortunately, we have a Spanish manager who acknowledges the importance of having a British core. I expect him to stick to that principle.

[G_Man]

You're point about sticking player from the Ivory Coast in the reserves for a few years and then claiming them as home grown is a good one and one relatively easy to fix:

Players don't qualify as home grown unless they are eligible to play for England's national team or they are born in England. The reason this is necessary is it will stop players claiming to be "home grown" becuase they've lived here for a few years as they won't be allowed to play for their national team. As the point is to improve the national team I think this would work.

[Shanks65]

IMO England currently have the most talented bunch of players they've ever had. (I know they failed recently, but that's more down to management, or lack of!)

You may well have a point on the sheer amount of foreigners in the British game, but I really can't see how it's negatively affected the national team.

Just my opinion though

[dww]

I don't really see what advantage an artificial limit is to be honest. The reason for the absence of young english players coming through is that we have had a system that has schooled players out of natural skill while not giving them the tactical knowledge to make up for this.

It is like Arsene Wenger says while kids at the age of 13 in this country continue to have less skills than those abroad then he will keep importing youth. The reason why the top teams have few english players is that there are very few who are goos enough. An imposed limit would simply mean that a certain number of less good players would have to play.

Recently we have seen that other clubs academies have finally started providing youngsters of a quality to make them better bets than importing cheap foreign players. The difference between ourselves and say Middlesborough is mainly that to play for Liverpool you need to be better than you do to play for them.

I genuinely believe that in time the shear economics of the situation will see more english players play in the PL. These players will benefit most from playing football at the highest level possible. The way to ensure this is to have the best quality players, managers and coaches in the league for them to compete with and play under.

The other argument is that you plans would actually be against european laws. I know teams like Arsenal play the rules to get EU passports for players from outside the EU, but ultimately the rules already prohibit the import of young players from outside europe. We will always need to obey by the laws of freedom of employment. So any limit would only affect those players from outside the EU and judging from the whinging about how long it took us to bring in Gonzales I don't think people believe that the regulations in that area are particularly lax.

A further pragmatic point is that the club sides do not owe any national association anything much in this day and age and will thus never change the rules purely for the benefit of the England team

[kopdan]

How do we limit it now?

Once the floodgates opened, that was it. You cant tell a club to only sell foreign players to get their numbers down.

[scully]

I'm totally in favour of limits and feel that those proposed are way too low. I feel that every domestic team in every country should be majority home-grown players. Having too many foreign players takes away a team's local identity. The whole thing caused me to look at the World Cup through very different eyes - when I was a kid it would be a really fascinating competition, all these players with exotic names, the vast majority of them unknown over here and playing football we'd never seen before. Now every team is just an assemblage of players we're over-familiar with from our own and other European leagues, with the added depressing element of the tournament just being a shop window for the likes of Chelsea to buy the brightest talents.

If you look through the BBC transfer-gossip column each day, out of about 30 players rumoured to be on the verge of a transfer to a British club, about 3 or 4 will be British. As players in the national team are people FROM that country representing their own country, in an ideal world every player in a domestic team would be FROM the town or city they're playing for.

[Tom]

I think that legally it would be impossible - certainly in the case of the european players, due to european employment laws.

If we could ban foreign players, I'd start with the welsh :-)

[kopdan]

bloody english

[scully]

I think that legally it would be impossible - certainly in the case of the european players, due to european employment laws.

If we could ban foreign players, I'd start with the welsh :-)

I think they were talking about getting football exempt from these laws. I don't see it happening though, epecially with those moaning Welsh sheepshaggers.

[dww]

I'm totally in favour of limits and feel that those proposed are way too low. I feel that every domestic team in every country should be majority home-grown players. Having too many foreign players takes away a team's local identity. The whole thing caused me to look at the World Cup through very different eyes - when I was a kid it would be a really fascinating competition, all these players with exotic names, the vast majority of them unknown over here and playing football we'd never seen before. Now every team is just an assemblage of players we're over-familiar with from our own and other European leagues, with the added depressing element of the tournament just being a shop window for the likes of Chelsea to buy the brightest talents.

If you look through the BBC transfer-gossip column each day, out of about 30 players rumoured to be on the verge of a transfer to a British club, about 3 or 4 will be British. As players in the national team are people FROM that country representing their own country, in an ideal world every player in a domestic team would be FROM the town or city they're playing for.

I don't see the logic that because we have representative football at one level we must have it at all levels. Ideally I would like to have a team of passionate Liverpool supporters but I really don't see why anyone thinks we would have been better off not having say Hyypia or Hamman in the side in the last few years.

On top of that how would you qualify for coming from a certain town. Would this mean players could never move home as they then could not play football.

I just don't see this rather odd need for homogenised teams of English players. I think there is a reasonable case for introducing Europe wide rules attempting to limit club debts and possibly the size of senior players in squads similar to the rules in place in France (and those proposed in Scotland a few years ago, but I'm not sure if they were implemented).

[Tom]

I think they were talking about getting football exempt from these laws. I don't see it happening though, epecially with those moaning Welsh sheepshaggers.

[scully]

I don't see the logic that because we have representative football at one level we must have it at all levels. Ideally I would like to have a team of passionate Liverpool supporters but I really don't see why anyone thinks we would have been better off not having say Hyypia or Hamman in the side in the last few years.

On top of that how would you qualify for coming from a certain town. Would this mean players could never move home as they then could not play football.

I just don't see this rather odd need for homogenised teams of English players. I think there is a reasonable case for introducing Europe wide rules attempting to limit club debts and possibly the size of senior players in squads similar to the rules in place in France (and those proposed in Scotland a few years ago, but I'm not sure if they were implemented).

I used that 'ideal world' as an extreme example. It really is a difficult issue, especially with a club like ours that has been so well-represented by non-English players throughout the ages, was in fact 100% Scottish when it started and whose arguably all-time greatest player was Scottish. I find it hard not to take ANY player that signs for us to my heart, regardless of nationality, as the vast majority of them realise that Liverpool is no ordinary club for them to be a mercenary club-hopper with for a season or two (like Portsmouth), they know the history and feel proud to become part of it. It just becomes a bit frustrating when the idea of signing a player from the British isles seems to fall further down the list of priorities each transfer window. Players like Hamann, Hyypia and Alonso mean a lot to me, but locals like Gerrard and Carragher mean a lot more. My mum said that when The Beatles became famous she felt really proud, like members of her own family had gone far. I get the same feeling whenever a Liverpool lad comes through the ranks and am sad to see it happening so rarely.

[dww]

I can see you point but I think that the way to get players of the quality of Carra and Gerrard is to make them compete with the best players possible to get in the first team. I actually think that wether they are local or not in the long run Rafa plans to bring through more players from the academy/youth setup. I can see why people want there to be local/british players coming through I just don't think that limiting foreigners is the way to go.

[scully]

Good points. No one can argue that English football didn't fall behind European football during the post-Heysel ban. Thus it could be said that the number of foreign players in the English league is allowing UK players and coaches to learn more from other countries' techniques. I hope they're putting the lessons to good use in the academies.