Kevin LustigSepp Blatter pushes player nationality plan, gets shot down by EU
May 8th 2008 17:37
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has been pushing changes to the requirements for the world's football clubs to employ foreign-born players. Blatter would require all clubs to field six players native to the country in which the team is based and just five international players in any given match. Teams are free to hire as many foreign-born players as they like; they just can't play more than five of them at a time.A separate effort on Blatter's part would see players required to reside in a country for five years before becoming eligible to play for that nation's international side. The previous requirement was two years.
Blatter's goal with these new regulations is ostensibly to limit the dominance of any particular national league and to keep players playing in their home countries in both club and national team football. According to Blatter, English Premier League teams' success in this year's Champions League is one of his primary motivations. The UEFA competition produces a huge amount of revenue for clubs, and this year the majority of that revenue will be flowing back to England. If players were forced to play their football closer to home, Blatter argues, this success would be shared around the continent by clubs from a variety of nations.
For his second rule change, Blatter has raised the case of Brazilian footballers. With the Brazilian national team stacked with talent as it is, many Brazilian-born players have gone elsewhere to seek national team play. According to Blatter, ". . . there is a danger that in 2014 half the players in the World Cup could come from Brazil!"
Blatter has already hit his first snag in putting these new rules into place. European Union authorities have declared that Blatter's foreign-player quota violates employment laws, and cannot be enforced on the continent. However, Blatter remains undeterred and is pressing on in the hopes of having these new regulations in place by 2012.
A more serious concern for Sepp Blatter than the rejection of his plan by the EU, however, should be the fact that it's idiotic. Looking at the Champions League this year and deciding that, because one league was especially successful, changes must be made to the way teams all over the world employ their players makes no sense at all. In fact, over the past decade, Champions League finalists have come from England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal. You don't have to go back much further than that to get a Dutch finalist in that list as well. If you add the UEFA Cup to the mix, there's even more diversity. Furthermore, other major leagues have had two teams in the final before, including two Spanish teams in the 1999/2000 final. Where were FIFA's changes then?
Europe doesn't need help sharing the wealth among the various leagues. The real issue is when players from outside of Europe come to the continent to play and leave their home teams behind. This has certainly had a lot to do with the tremendous gap in quality between European football and that of elsewhere. However, a player quota won't solve this. Keeping good Brazilian footballers at home, for example, isn't going to make Brazilian teams any more capable of providing the facilities, the support, the stadium quality, the safety, or any of the other advantages that players get when they move to Europe. Keeping Didier Drogba in the Ivory Coast wouldn't put Ivory Coast football clubs on the map. It would simply severely lower Drogba's quality of life and keep him from showing his true talents on a club that can help him to produce the amazing football he's able to.
FIFA has big problems with inequality in world football, but the world has big problems with inequality in many more serious areas. Those inequalities must be addressed before football is played at the same level everywhere, and suppressing good football by keeping players in countries where they can't get the representation and the compensation they deserve doesn't even begin to help. In fact, football is a conduit to success for many players that then use their success to benefit the communities they came from. How much good can those players do if they can never become successful because of the quota system?
Since this plan so obviously won't solve the problems that it's meant to solve and since it could so appropriately have been suggested in a number of previous years, I'm forced to wonder if Sepp Blatter doesn't have some ulterior motive for promoting these changes now. I find it more than suspicious that Blatter is making these recommendations in a year in which it is the English Premier League that is having such success. Blatter has a history of animosity toward English football (for reasons someone more knowledgeable will have to explain to me) and it has only been worsened by the recent suggestion by the English FA of an extra round of international Premier League matches. Nobody is a more ferocious opponent of this plan than Blatter, and he has already threatened to keep the World Cup out of England if the FA continue to support it. He's also taken a shot at England manager Fabio Capello, suggesting a foreign-born coach couldn't possibly be a successful national team manager.
Given all of this, it's fairly clear that there are only two conclusions to come to about Blatter in the wake of his "six-plus-five" quota plan: he's corrupt and devious, trying to dismantle English clubs because of some kind of anti-English bent, or he's a moron. Either way, let's all hope Blatter's plan continues to hit obstacles like the one it recently encountered with the European Union.
Oh, and by the way, I have no issue at all with a five-year residency requirement. However, the claim that half the footballers in the World Cup could come from Brazil by 2014 is ludicrous. It's not even crazy, it's just stupid, and I'd expect something better from the President of FIFA. Are there even that many national team level Brazilian football players in the world, let alone ones that are trying to become residents of other countries? Give me a break.
Blatter's goal with these new regulations is ostensibly to limit the dominance of any particular national league and to keep players playing in their home countries in both club and national team football. According to Blatter, English Premier League teams' success in this year's Champions League is one of his primary motivations. The UEFA competition produces a huge amount of revenue for clubs, and this year the majority of that revenue will be flowing back to England. If players were forced to play their football closer to home, Blatter argues, this success would be shared around the continent by clubs from a variety of nations.
For his second rule change, Blatter has raised the case of Brazilian footballers. With the Brazilian national team stacked with talent as it is, many Brazilian-born players have gone elsewhere to seek national team play. According to Blatter, ". . . there is a danger that in 2014 half the players in the World Cup could come from Brazil!"
Blatter has already hit his first snag in putting these new rules into place. European Union authorities have declared that Blatter's foreign-player quota violates employment laws, and cannot be enforced on the continent. However, Blatter remains undeterred and is pressing on in the hopes of having these new regulations in place by 2012.
A more serious concern for Sepp Blatter than the rejection of his plan by the EU, however, should be the fact that it's idiotic. Looking at the Champions League this year and deciding that, because one league was especially successful, changes must be made to the way teams all over the world employ their players makes no sense at all. In fact, over the past decade, Champions League finalists have come from England, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal. You don't have to go back much further than that to get a Dutch finalist in that list as well. If you add the UEFA Cup to the mix, there's even more diversity. Furthermore, other major leagues have had two teams in the final before, including two Spanish teams in the 1999/2000 final. Where were FIFA's changes then?
Europe doesn't need help sharing the wealth among the various leagues. The real issue is when players from outside of Europe come to the continent to play and leave their home teams behind. This has certainly had a lot to do with the tremendous gap in quality between European football and that of elsewhere. However, a player quota won't solve this. Keeping good Brazilian footballers at home, for example, isn't going to make Brazilian teams any more capable of providing the facilities, the support, the stadium quality, the safety, or any of the other advantages that players get when they move to Europe. Keeping Didier Drogba in the Ivory Coast wouldn't put Ivory Coast football clubs on the map. It would simply severely lower Drogba's quality of life and keep him from showing his true talents on a club that can help him to produce the amazing football he's able to.
FIFA has big problems with inequality in world football, but the world has big problems with inequality in many more serious areas. Those inequalities must be addressed before football is played at the same level everywhere, and suppressing good football by keeping players in countries where they can't get the representation and the compensation they deserve doesn't even begin to help. In fact, football is a conduit to success for many players that then use their success to benefit the communities they came from. How much good can those players do if they can never become successful because of the quota system?
Since this plan so obviously won't solve the problems that it's meant to solve and since it could so appropriately have been suggested in a number of previous years, I'm forced to wonder if Sepp Blatter doesn't have some ulterior motive for promoting these changes now. I find it more than suspicious that Blatter is making these recommendations in a year in which it is the English Premier League that is having such success. Blatter has a history of animosity toward English football (for reasons someone more knowledgeable will have to explain to me) and it has only been worsened by the recent suggestion by the English FA of an extra round of international Premier League matches. Nobody is a more ferocious opponent of this plan than Blatter, and he has already threatened to keep the World Cup out of England if the FA continue to support it. He's also taken a shot at England manager Fabio Capello, suggesting a foreign-born coach couldn't possibly be a successful national team manager.
Given all of this, it's fairly clear that there are only two conclusions to come to about Blatter in the wake of his "six-plus-five" quota plan: he's corrupt and devious, trying to dismantle English clubs because of some kind of anti-English bent, or he's a moron. Either way, let's all hope Blatter's plan continues to hit obstacles like the one it recently encountered with the European Union.
Oh, and by the way, I have no issue at all with a five-year residency requirement. However, the claim that half the footballers in the World Cup could come from Brazil by 2014 is ludicrous. It's not even crazy, it's just stupid, and I'd expect something better from the President of FIFA. Are there even that many national team level Brazilian football players in the world, let alone ones that are trying to become residents of other countries? Give me a break.
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