The new Premier League legislation enforcing all clubs to register 25 players, with eight home grown players, has been developed over years and will come into play this season. The rules are supposed to encourage clubs to give young British players the opportunity to play that may not have previously existed, when injuries begin to pile up the hope is that it will be these young players that managers turn to. To put clubs minds at ease, ‘home grown players’ don’t need to be British, but to have been playing in England or Wales for at least three seasons before the year they turned 21, and it is this rule that will ultimately cause more problems than answers.
Clubs are already investing heavily in scouting networks across the globe to pick up the best young talent, and if they feel that they can get better quality abroad then this rule will only heighten that process. At Chelsea, their quota of eight will be made up with academy players such as Gael Kakuta (French), Fabio Borini (Italian) and Jeffrey Bruma (Dutch) who have been at the club for enough time to qualify under the new legislation. Chelsea believe that of their crop of players around this age group, these are better than any English players and thus they will get the opportunity should it arise. And this is the point – they are better players. It doesn’t matter where these players come from, clubs will simply play whoever is best.
What the rule will also create is an inflated value in these players. Any player that qualifies for the rule, born in Britain or not, becomes more valuable than before. British clubs already complain of having to buy from abroad because British players are too expensive, and now there value is even greater. Players who may not have made the grade before now might be rushed into games prematurely because they qualify to play, whereas a better player does not.
Clubs outside the top seven or eight in the country, who may not be able to afford big transfers, have benefitted from taking young players on loan: last season Jack Wilshere was at Bolton, Michael Mancienne spent the year at Wolves and Tom Cleverley impressed at Watford. If the parent clubs now feel the need to hold on to these players in case injuries pile up, then they become more reluctant to loan them out, thus harming the development of the young players due to the lack of games. It doesn’t suit the players, or the clubs who could have used them, and ultimately the league suffers due to the stockpiling of talent – the exact opposite of what the rules are trying to achieve. And what of players over 21? Suddenly there is the real possibility that they will get frozen out because clubs have already filled their quota; if you don’t make your club’s 25 then that means zero games until the next transfer window.
The legislation is perhaps designed to ease clubs in, maybe over the next five years the rules will be altered to allow more chances for British players. The legislation has good intentions, but it is almost coming too late in the development of players. If British players are struggling to compete to get places against foreign imports when they are 16, 17 and 18, then that process will continue later in their career. The development should be happening when the players are younger. The continent is producing better young players, and that is what the FA should be investigating. The new Premier League rules simply allow clubs to continue poaching from a different, more technically gifted, pool of talent. As a result of the rules, clubs are worried that their British youngsters aren’t good enough, and the drive to find players of the same age, but of better quality from abroad, is in danger of accelerating.
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