Fun times ahead at the FIFA Congress in Sydney with news that Septic, cough, Sepp Blatter is threatening to make it harder for Brazilians to play for other national teams and proposing to cap at five the number of foreigners that can play for an individual club.
Breaking news: EU rejects Blatter’s quota plans
Blatter is surely having a laugh when he says: “[FIFA] are on the edge of where football is going.”
If anything, by attempting to put in more checks and brakes on the movement of players FIFA is edging backwards at a rate of knots.
For this writer, football is destined to go down the path of the showy, thrill-a-minute Indian Premier League, which in recent weeks has completely hijacked cricket and will go on to irrevocably dampen the appeal of the international game as we know it.
In a globalised world, nations and nationalities are having less relevancy, not more. Megacities, with their international workforces, cabals of billionaires and piles of cash, will become the new playing field for international football.
If FIFA had half a clue it would see what the IPL has done to cricket and figure out a way to prevent the same thing happening to football. It is not a silly fantasy. Someone, sometime in the future will try to take over football from FIFA. It’s just a matter of when.
If it keeps on trying to stifle “free trade” like this, guaranteed it’ll be sooner rather than later.
I was amazed to read that Harry Kewell, an Australian lad with a British passport who used to play for Liverpool in the English Premier League, is said to have cost the Merseyside club a staggering £157,554 or $328,000 a match during his Reds career.
That includes matches the Smithfield export didn’t play, which unfortunately for the perennially crocked Kewell amounted to quite a few. In five years, he played just 139 times in all competitions for a measly 16 goals.
Where to now for “K”? No amount of wheeling and dealing from Bernie Mandic or sympathetic puff pieces from Channel Nine can disguise the fact he is not the player he used to be.
Much was made of his attendance at a Newcastle Jets match not too long ago, the question on everyone’s lips being when he would come home to Australia and play in the A-League.
Back then the idea seemed fanciful, even fantastic. A pipedream. Now it’s a very distinct possibility. Most of the talk about Socceroos returning home has focused on Mark Viduka, but unlike Kewell he seems to have a few more European seasons left in the tank.
One last broadside. The new A-League salary cap scale contained in the new PFA/FFA collective bargaining agreement, though laudable, is still laughably inadequate.
While the IPL is talking about scrapping salary caps altogether and paying the Andrew Symondses and Yuvraj Singhs of this world up to $14 million a season, the A-League’s already modest cap will only be $1.9 million next year, $2 million by 2010, and $2.1 million in 2012.
An increase of one hundred grand a year. Golly gosh! Watch out IPL!
Ask yourself this: if you were a talented young sportsman, equally adept with a cricket bat as with a football, with the choice of playing a few seasons in the IPL or a few seasons in the A-League, where would you be chancing your arm?
It’s a no-brainer to me.
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