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It would be hard to find an Englishman who does not sing the praises of the significantly large contingent of foreign players that ply their trade on the world’s biggest stage, the Barclays Premier League.
Manchester United’s Portugese winger Cristiano Ronaldo had a stunning 07/08 season; Liverpool’s Fernando Torres is the most successful debut foreigner in the Premier League’s history; Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas is the heartbeat of the Gunners; while Chelsea’s Didier Drogba has roared the Blues into a great period of success.
And all of these players have an impressive supporting cast made up of many cultures and countries.
So why does Sepp Blatter want to end it all?
The UEFA president is heavily pushing the bid for a 6+5 quota in domestic competitions, which would mean that six players on the side are eligible to play for the national team of the country of the club.
So, in England, twelve English players would have to grace the pitch for the game to start.
Sit back in your seat and think of the complications, the revolution this would bring to domestic competitions around the world.
Chelsea would be in a position where their English players would be forced to play every single game – and Chelsea’s current first team has these English stocks: Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, John Terry, Michael Mancienne, Scott Sinclair, Jimmy Smith and Lee Sawyer.
Only four of those players play in the first team on a consistent basis. Michael Mancienne has only played in two games for the club. Scott Sinclair, Jimmy Smith and Lee Sawyer are all out on loan at the moment. And only Sinclair has played for Chelsea’s first team with five appearances.
The idea for 6+5 is that it would be gradually rolled out slowly, with 4+7 the starting point.
In a hypothetical situation, if 4+7 was to be introduced for the last game of the current season, then A. Cole, Lampard, Terry and Mancienne would have to start.
Joe Cole is out for the season, and the three other players, are, as mentioned before, on loan.
So the introduction of Mancienne, in our hypothetical situation, would mean that Bosingwa or Ivanovic would have to be dropped so that the Englishman can take the right back position. Doing this would weaken the team.
And that is just 4+7.
Now we enter the transfer window, and Chelsea must get ready for the 6+5 ruling. So we purchase, say Aston Villa’s Ashley Young, and sell the services of Kalou, seeing that we need Englishmen and not Ivory Coast men.
But the wrecking ball of 6+5 doesn’t stop there.
Aston Villa, now without the option of Ashley Young, must go and purchase another Englishman to make up their 6+5 quota.
You can see the trail that this proposed rule would leave. Eventually teams like West Bromwich Albion, with their English players poached by the lure of money from bigger clubs, will need to fill in the gaps left by the English players that have moved from their club to an even bigger club – the Big 4.
And so lesser quality players would have to be purchased by West Brom and such, taken from the Championship.
If they were better than the foreign players already at these clubs, they would already be there. But they’re not. So that’s why the foreign players are purchased: to improve the standard of players at these clubs.
I can see the positives in Blatter’s proposal, and I do admit that England does have quite a few top players. Obviously, there is some sort of a problem when Liverpool have more Spanish players on the field than Spanish side Real Madrid.
But if 6+5 were to come in, just take a look at Arsenal. They would have to forgo a lot of their talented foreign youngsters in favour of lesser talented Englishmen.
Losing the foreigners and introducing lesser players into the top flights around the world is not the answer.
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