Should the Football League be Congratulated?

[Gromit]

The Football League has voted overwhelmingly in favour of implementing new quotas on home-grown players from the start of next season.

At least four players in every 16-man match-day squad will have to have been registered domestically for at least three years before their 21st birthday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/77898 08.stm

And should this be extended to yhr Premiership?

[lesblue]

Yes it should, and I think all teams should declare a playing squad of (say) 23 players at the start of the season, with perhaps a maximum of 14 overseas players. If a team wants a bigger squad, then anyone added above the initial 23, should be English,too. Ideally, these players will have come through the clubs academy and reserve sides.

[joggerjayne]

Well, that's Arsenal bugg3red.

[New Judge]

All jolly fine.

Then along comes a player from one of the EU nations and says he wants to play in the English league, but is prevented from doing so because of restrictions by the employers which are based purely on his nationality. Cue the European court to swing into action (it may take a couple of years) and they rule that such restrictions of trade are illegal under EU regulations.

And they would be quite right. EU workers are free to work anywhere they wish throughout the community (with the short-term exception of those from the recently joined states) and no employer can insist that 25% of its workforce must have been registered to work in Britain for any length of time. Football clubs will hopefully be treated no differently. Then perhaps this country�s football supporters will learn what may not have troubled them before but what many others already know � that the UK is not in charge of its own affairs.

[Gromit]

New Judge

Because the home-grown player can be any nationality just has to be registered 3 years before the age of 21) apparently the EU are OK with this. It is barring a player on nationality grounds which would fall foul to EU law.

UEFA are planning something similar for all European football by 211-12 season. It has been thoroughly checked and is lawful.

The Football League may even be implementing a UEFA inspired experiment.

[New Judge]

So a player can come to this country at 18 and register. Then at age 21 he is considered �home grown� (having spent just 14% of his life here). A strange interpretation, but the football business often gives the impression that it inhabits a strange, parallel universe. .

Let�s think of this scenario: I run a factory and I stipulate that anybody, regardless of their nationality, who wants to work for me must have had a UK National Insurance number for three years before they were 21. Immediately this rules out all the Poles who have recently arrived on these shores and just because I insist my rules apply to all nationalities it is clear that it places foreign EU workers at an unfair (and illegal) disadvantage. I would not get away with it.

Although this scheme may have been checked and considered lawful, it has not been tested through the courts. That will only come when a player who was unable to register here before his eighteenth birthday is denied the opportunity to compete for a place in an English club side because they already have their quota of foreign players. He will argue that he is barred because he did not register here before he was 18. He will go on to say that his original nationality makes it far less likely that he could comply with that regulation than people born in the UK, and so he is, indeed, suffering discrimination on the grounds of his nationality.

You may think I�m being unnecessarily pessimistic, but stranger things have happened when �indirect discrimination� has been alleged and only time will tell.

But remember, although not quite the same argument, football clubs believed it was perfectly reasonable to demand transfer fees for players who were no longer contracted to them. Then along came Mr Bosman.

[Gromit]

Indeed New Judge

That is why I suspect UEFA are behind this experiment. Try it first in the English lower leagues and test it there before rolling it out across Europe.

Lord Mawhinney is taking all the glory for this historic move, but I don't think the influx of foreign players is much of a problem for the likes of Accrington Stanley and Grimsby, so why impose it there first?

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/ne ws-and-comment/mawhinney-hails-historic-footba ll-ruling-1203221.html