Xenophobes rejoice over Sepp’s latest masterplan
During a congress held at the home of football, Sydney, Australia, FIFA delegates have overwhelmingly voted in favour of Sepp Blatter’s ‘six-plus-five’ plan, which would could limit the amount of foreign players in a team to five. The BBC sez:
Blatter wants to restrict the number of foreign players in teams by the start in the 2010/11 season, with a minimum of four home-grown players.
He added he expects it to grow to six, with a maximum of five foreigners, by 2012/13 - and claims the plan has the backing of key European delegates.
In contrast, the “home-grown players” rule, which is set to be expanded from next season, has received EU backing. That means four players in a Champions League or Uefa Cup squad must have been developed by the club, with another four having been produced by clubs from the same federation.
The rule is discriminatory and contradicts European law, and seems to be going down about as well as Blatter’s suggestion that women footballers should wear tighter shorts. But what do you think? Would a shake-up like this be good for the game? Would it encourage the big teams to invest more in their youth training structures? Votes and comments below, please.
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2 responses so far
1 are you kidding me? // May 30, 2008 at 9:09 am
This is a horrible idea. not only does it limit the quality of football, but also the opportunities of gifted footballers from all over the world.
2 indieLimey // May 30, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I am amazed that the UK readers who I presume read this would vote against it.
Yeah, I’m 100% serious. Why do you think English players are so bad? Perhaps it is because the big clubs completely ignore all young UK talent and if they do buy them, they sit on the bench for 37 games out of 38 every season. Scott Sinclair at Chelsea for example. Walcott at Arsenal.
There is no doubt at all that the quality of English football is so bad because the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool play 1 Englishman per game. We had a quota in 1990. We got to the world cup semis. We had a quota in 86. We got to the world cup semis. We haven’t got anywhere since the quotas were abolished. Keegan shut down Newcastle’s entire youth academy. Why bother when you can buy players on the cheap from Turkey. I would LOVE to see this enforced. It was so cool with the quota of 3 foreign players in the 90s, it always meant your foreigners were awesome. Giggs, Kanchelskis, Vialli, Gullit. So much more fun. And the rest were mediocre English players rather than mediocre, cheap foreigners like Hosan Ghaly. I don’t see this as racist or discriminatory, I feel it is vital for the future of the English national side which is frankly an embarrassment at the moment.
Rant over.