Following UEFA's comments at the end of August that Europe's top clubs could be barred from the Champions League if they do not curb their spending, Premier League clubs in this country have last week agreed new rules on how many home-grown players they will have in their squad. That suggesting we are now perhaps getting somewhere as far as the recent crazy spending at the top level of football is concerned. It would seem we are going for a Spanish style system as far as numbers are concerned, with English Premier League clubs from 2010-11 needing to declare a 25 man squad at the end of both the August and January transfer windows. The situation in Spain having been for many years that A team players are numbered 1-25 with a maximum of three goalkeepers numbered 1, 13 or 25, any reserve team players called up for action during the season having to wear shirt numbers between 26 and 50. The introduction of the home-grown player rule is perhaps the most interesting point in the whole announcement though in an effort to stop teams stockpiling foreign players. My old mates on this one being Liverpool who apparently have the highest percentage in Europe of expatriate players in their squad at a whopping 90%. The new scenario from next season being that clubs must include at least eight home-grown players in their first team squad of 25. That "home-grown" description is bound to be something that will end up being open to debate. The current definition of that on the Premier League website reading - "A home-grown player will be defined as one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the Season during which he turns 21)." Hang on a minute then, "irrespective of nationality", so just a short time after we have Manchester's City and United in the news along with, in particular, Chelsea for incidents pertaining to French youth team players, we now have a new system which won't really change anything. As long as foreign-born players have been registered in this country for three years before they are 21 then they are "home-grown", something that won't affect the Premier League big four who have a habit of stockpiling teenagers from abroad. Look at ourselves though, Jamie Cleary is a Belfast-born centre-half playing in our youth team who was signed at the age of 16. Perhaps a better rule would have been that players are only "home-grown" if they were born in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, with a certain amount of foreign "wild cards" then allowed in the before age 21 rule. Although who knows where we would end up down the EU laws road on that one. And just because a person is born in a country it doesn't mean that they might not have got a passport from another country entitling them by law to be regarded as "home-grown" in the British Isles. And are those passports legal? St Etienne having been fined seven points in 2001 when the French league's judicial commission judged that Brazilian Alex and Ukrainian Maxim Levitsky had been using false European Union passports. The pair using Portuguese and Greek passports respectively. So the whole thing is sure to open up a can of worms as some clubs in this country will no doubt look to push the rules as far as possible to their own advantage. Premier League Chief executive Richard Scudamore thinks that the new rules will ultimately help out England's national team though, which on that score is slightly ironically at the moment managed by an Italian, Scudamore commenting : "It's not in the club's interests to stockpile players. It will make buying home-grown talent more attractive. We're not going down the route of a nationality test but what this will mean is that you just can't buy a team from abroad. We think it will give clubs an extra incentive to invest in youth. We think that one of the benefits will be that it will help the England team." In addition to the home-grown rule Premier League clubs will now have to adhere to strict financial regulations, something that will also be the case as far as the Champions League is concerned. The Times They Are a-Changin then sang Bob Dylan and it looks like we are going to see some big changes at the top end of the game. And if that means that even the tiniest piece of pie crumbles down to the lower leagues then it can only be a good thing. |