! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.
I’m undecided on Sepp Blatter’s plans to impose quotas on foreign players in football teams.
- On the plus side, it’s pissed off Federal Europe who have declared it illegal.
- On the negative side, anything involving Sepp Blatter must be a bad thing.
- On the plus side, it means English clubs will have to invest in English talent instead of relying on foreign players.
- On the negative side, English teams will struggle for a while because not enough investment has been put into home grown talent unlike other countries.
So I’m torn – I can’t decide whether, on balance, it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Technorati Tags: Football, Quotas, Sepp Blatter
I disagree with point 4, england has ivested a lot in its youth teams and they do do pretty well.
Oki, Wayne Rooney is not Bobby Moore but he still has his points.
The game in scotland has benefitted from a lack of foreign blood, we do now have a reasonable wee coubtry team but in our case, the dire financial situation in our leagues made it happen as opposed to legislation.
The may be your least sane post ever. What about the motivation of the individual players themselves? Footballers are not just products of investment they are (reasonably) sentient individuals. As such, even the remote chance of a glamorous existence playing for any major team in the world is likely to spur them to greater efforts in whatever miserable village they happen to be born in. Even the most ambitious person doesn’t strive to be better than anyone but the people he needs to beat. By limiting competition to accidental national pools, you would damage the quality of football itself across the world. If you have national quotas for football teams, why not go the whole hog by having the same quotas in the City of London? Sure, it would mean British people who would not otherwise be good enough would get a chance at the megabucks, but how long would the City itself remain competitive? Honestly, Wonko. Why does logic go out of the window when sport stirs its sweaty limbs?
Tom, I did say I can’t make my mind up. I agree that young footballers aren’t an investment but ambition is worth diddly squat if there are no local sports programmes, no sports academies, etc. We have the national sports centre in Lilleshall, just outside of Telford yet there are virtually no top flight players from round here. We have two football clubs in Telford – Shrewsbury is in League 2 and Telford is in the Blue Square North. The biggest achievement in football in Shropshire since Shrewsbury and Wellington Town (now AFC Telford United) both won the Welsh Cup at the turn of the last century is two Shrewsbury players going to Manchester City. So, despite the national sports centre being in the county, decent players still aren’t being turned out but there’s plenty of raw talent and ambition.
It won’t worry my club too much. Season before last in the last game of the season Middlesbrough fielded an exclusively English starting eleven, most of whom were products of it’s own academy!
A recent England under 21 side fielded no less than 3 Boro academy graduates.
Not bad for a small town team that consistantly (cup upsets excepted) bats above its weight!
I think Blatter’s proposal is positive, as it has started a debate about EU law as much as English football. And note Tom Paine that it is England and not “Britain” we are talking about. I assume that Scottish, Welsh, and Irish players would be limited also? Haven’t heard what the footballers themselves think of the idea, but then my interest has been in the whole pissing of the EC bit…
Team Britain would be doomed if it were forced to have a certain amount of Porridge Wogs for the purposes of equlaity and stuff