Foreign Player Limit?

The problem isn't the number of foreigners in the the Premiership. It's much more fundamental than that.

Our youth system is all about competitive play. It encourages hard grafting, tough tackling but ultimately technically poor players. While other countries emphasise ball skills at a young age, we emphasise winning at all costs.

We don't produce Arsene Wenger style players because the majority of people in this country have a very different view from him on how the game should be played and how the rules should be interpreted. Referees, especially in the lower leagues, give zero protection to technically gifted players who don't rely on physique to win games.

Why we haven't seen a world class goalkeeper since Seaman is more of a mystery.
 
Rubbish. Please indicate exactly which aspect of EU law prevents a club from implementing a cap?

These don't answer your question directly, and I don't pretend to be an expert on EU law, but it might give an idea on the headaches EU free-trade agreements cause to your suggested restrictions.

Bosman Ruling

Kolpak Ruling

P.S. Hope you had a nice holiday. How did you survive without DAoC for so long?
 
It's probably worth mentioning that limiting foreigners is just a possible excuse for England's 'failings', one scraped from the bottom of the barrel. If you think, it actually doesn't make any sense. Before the Premier League England won only one summer tournament, in the years between 1966 and 1992 where foreigners were a relative rarity they weren't able to repeat this success. That is to say, we haven't done that well before the surge started.

The one thing I do agree about limiting non English players is that by having more of our own, they will be cheaper. One reason why they're dearer than Jonny Foreigner is because they're rarer. Other things that are already around will help. Compared to e.g. Spain, England isn't that attractive to an incoming player. He'd pay 50% tax here compared to 23%. Also the Pound is weaker against the Euro making him more expensive for our clubs. Also, in terms of money, don't forget that when clubs go for a foreigner, they're more often than not going for a finished product. Training a young English boy will take time and a lot of money, and by averages alone, he will not make it. Look at the traditional top four sides, Arsenal produced Ashley Cole; Liverpool raised Gerrard and Carragher; UTD had Fletcher (though it seems there is debate about whether is good enough); Chelsea had John Terry. The similarity here is that we're going back a good few years, it's almost one a decade.

That's the issue for me. I just don't feel this potential is being exploited or developed sufficiently. I accept it's a severe step, but restricting foreign competition would seem a way to achieve this.

See below, but in essence if people aren't looking for the right skills there is little value in raising the quantity available.

The problem isn't the number of foreigners in the the Premiership. It's much more fundamental than that.

Our youth system is all about competitive play. It encourages hard grafting, tough tackling but ultimately technically poor players. While other countries emphasise ball skills at a young age, we emphasise winning at all costs.

We don't produce Arsene Wenger style players because the majority of people in this country have a very different view from him on how the game should be played and how the rules should be interpreted. Referees, especially in the lower leagues, give zero protection to technically gifted players who don't rely on physique to win games.

Why we haven't seen a world class goalkeeper since Seaman is more of a mystery.

Correct, when Wenger first came to England he couldn't believe there was not only a total lack of technically gifted players, but that there was almost a deliberate attempt to not breed them. He said it'd probably take around 10 years for them to appear and I think now in Wilshere, Lansbury and Ramsey (ok not English) we have three for example.

I'm not going to discuss it too deeply as it was done to death at the time, but once all the heat around the Shawcross/Ramsey incident had died down one thing became clear in my opinion. Shawcross is the type of player that is lauded and scouted for all across the country; Ramsey it appears only really by Wenger and his team. If that's the personnel we want representing us in summer competitions that automatically means we have no chance of winning them. The approach for the task is all wrong in my eyes.

A problem with linked youth setups is that players are selected due to the needs of its senior team or another domestic side. If England needs a right back, then it'll get one only when a club needs one, not the other way round. There is no independent school, France has Clairfontaine I believe.

Another point as well about the brawn vs. brain thing is a player's personality, which of course is very important. Yes footballers the world over are assumed to be stupid but there is a very high proportion of thuggish characters in our team. Intelligent players in my opinion make better students and later on will raise the quality of the side they playing for. Look at our squad. 5 of them have been unfaithful to their wives or girlfriends, one hit an ex partner, one 'forgot' a drugs test, one went mental in a night club. When France won the World Cup in 1998 a huge difference was easily noticed by listening to them in interviews. Over here we think they're classless simple creatures, in France however people respect what Henry, Zidane etc. have to say; they are held in the same esteem as we view our rugby players.

Edit - long post. Think I had a lot to say lol.
 
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. Over here we think they're classless simple creatures, in France however people respect what Henry, Zidane etc. have to say; they are held in the same esteem as we view our rugby players.

Edit - long post. Think I had a lot to say lol.

Not the best examples to hold up considering one is a cheat and the other assaulted another player.
However, the majority of your post is correct a point I've already made 4 or 5 up, players who can play are not taken on in the lower leagues, and the big clubs simply cannot take chances with every unproven player.

Like I've said, If clubs like Lincoln are perpetually stuck in lower mediocrity with their hoof and hope football and "honest pros" why dont they try something different and bring some young footballing talent onboard and mabye make some money for themselves if they find the odd gem.
 
What is the current cap on foreign players in the epl?
Is it squad based or team based?

Last time I regularly watched epl it was 3 foreigners max per team. I'm thinking 1998 ish maybe earlier.
 
I never post here, so excuse the intrusion. I just wanted to garner opinion on whether it is time for the FA to impose a cap on the number of foreign players a team can field in the domestic leagues?

The question is prompted by the lacklustre display against the US last night. My wife and I have been on holiday, so have missed a lot of the build up etc. but managed to watch the last half in the airport.

I feel completely frustrated at the team selection and performance. Emile Heskey FFS?! Really? Is he the best we have? He was a donkey years ago and hasn't improved since.

Where did we find the goal keeper? Retards R Us?

I think we need to bite the bullet, boot the foreigners out and expose potential domestic talent to the greatest extent possible. We should not be drawing with the US, that should be a comfortable 2 - 0 or 3 - 0 win.

* dons flame proof suit *

No, its ridiculous, and fairly ignorant to think the top 23 players playing with WORSE players every week would somehow make them better, it flat out wouldn't, it WILL make them WORSE.

THe issue is NOT the quality of the players, its the team, the managers, the press and the fact that, by and large 3 quite different managers, personality, origin, ability, have all played the same teams the others would have played, in the same formations, with the same faults.

England needs change, and its got exactly nothing to do with the amount of foreign players in the league.

THeres 10k's of english people who play in everything from the Premier league to local football leagues and if they are good enough they end up at a good team. Theres more than enough English players in the premierleague to send out 5 english squads to the world cup, more english players in the premierleague will simply mean more lower level players moving up.

Brazil used to win the world cup with almost all their players playing in Brazil, now almost all their players play in Europe, and they can still win the world cup.
 
What is the current cap on foreign players in the epl?
Is it squad based or team based?

Last time I regularly watched epl it was 3 foreigners max per team. I'm thinking 1998 ish maybe earlier.

A long while back it was only 3 non EU players, say 3 brazillians but 8 spanish dudes was fine.

They are entirely stupidly, ignorantly and going to reduce the quality of the prem league by making us need more and more homegrown players.

We EASILY have the ability to send a FAR higher quality 23 man squad to the world cup this time around.

Would we all think Spain had a problem with their football and needed to boot out foreigners if a mad manager simply decided to not take Villa, Fabregas, Xavi and INiesta, and bench Casillas? No, we'd think it was a crap manager.

King, Caragher, Lennon, SWP, Heskey, Crouch, Milner aren't good enough to be in the squad or start games. Yes King actually is good enough, but pretty much 80% of the country thought it was a stupid risk and it would backfire, it did, ridiculous choice to take him.

The England teams for the past 12 years could all have been better by chosing better players we had but didn't take.


I mean Heskey? We took Heskey, HESKEY ffs. Why are we questioning if England can win a world cup if we boot foreigners out, we have about 80higher scoring English strikers across all leagues. Lets say we get another 20 English strikers in the premier league, all out of League one, what does it matter if we pick Heskey? Answer, it doesn't. Player choice, management, thats the ONLY reason England haven't won a world cup a couple more times.

Some cups you just don't have players good enough to win it, other times we most certainly did have, but were poorly managed, other times we simply got unlucky.
 
Maybe the english should teach their kids to be healthy, stop drinking and smoking as soon as they turn 13 and take part in sports, then maybe they might have a better chance of getting into EPL teams over foreigners. I think the drinking age should be changed to 21 like America in order to help kids stay away from booze, it wont stop it but it will help a great deal.
 
I mean Heskey? We took Heskey, HESKEY ffs. Why are we questioning if England can win a world cup if we boot foreigners out, we have about 80higher scoring English strikers across all leagues. Lets say we get another 20 English strikers in the premier league, all out of League one, what does it matter if we pick Heskey? Answer, it doesn't. Player choice, management, thats the ONLY reason England haven't won a world cup a couple more times.

To be fair, the record of Germany's strikers last season was very poor. Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose only scored 5 Bundesliga goals between them. Sometimes a coach has to go with their instinct.
 
To be fair, the record of Germany's strikers last season was very poor. Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose only scored 5 Bundesliga goals between them. Sometimes a coach has to go with their instinct.

Interestingly both of those players are naturalised polish :D ... as mentioned above there was previously a cap despite it being Non-EU yet we still struggle as a team.
 
It's nothing to do with a limit on foreign players. Its all do with the fact that no-one wants home grown talent anymore, they want to buy talent instead of creating it.

The days of youth acadamies is long gone.
 
To be fair, the record of Germany's strikers last season was very poor. Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose only scored 5 Bundesliga goals between them. Sometimes a coach has to go with their instinct.

To be fair Klose is a handfull of goals of being Germany's highest ever goal international goal scorer and Podolskis international record of goal scoring is insane.

Heskey has a proven record of being complete trash for the past 8 years both domestically and internationally and he still gets picked.

Thats the difference.

The German coach also plays a system that suits the players and not an arbitrary formation that doesnt suit either the staff we have available or that is necessary to win a tournament.

For instance, the USA game, the tactic England decided to go with after seeing that the states couldnt cope with defending the ball on the floor, was to bang it in the air to Heskey and to try hanging crosses against two huge centrebacks who absolutely lap up those kind of balls.

Why?
 
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To suggest that foreign players being able to play in our league makes our national team worse is mental. Why do other countries not suffer from this?

Our problems are down to the development of youth players and emphasising on the wrong qualities (power/size/pace instead of technical ability).

Another thing, there weren't always a lot of foreigners in English football and England hardly did any better before their inclusion, besides 1966 obviously. However, the public love a scapegoat rather than facing we're just not that good at producing great footballers, so lets blame the jonny foreigners, it's their fault!!!!!

The best players love to compete against other top players, by reducing the quality of the league you're obviously reducing potential development. You don't improve by playing second level players every week, we need to attract the best to get the best out of our own players. It's not like there aren't many English players in the English leagues, I bet there's a large majority of English to non-English
 
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Is the Premier League not the highest percentage of non national players in the league?

I'm sure I've worded that awfully and people won't understand :(
 
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