Thetownend.com

Town boss calls for overseas player quota
           
           


  EITHER the Premier League introduces a foreign player quota within the English game or the national team will never challenge at a major tournament again.

           

http://www.thisisswindontownfc.co.uk/news/headlines/10658303.Town_boss_calls_for_overseas_player_quota/?ref=rss
           
           
           

The best bit of this article is the first comment underneath...

We've been having this debate, in probably the 15 years that football forums have been around.

Dyke is a prize cunt...but he's right with his tanker analogy, the problem is that after every little turn made by the tanker of Engish football, the dock has been rebuilt somewhere else.

Think the dwindling number of England fans, will just have to get used to us being a bit like Scotland, a team stocked with modest but willing players, capable of an odd surprise result, but unlikely to qualify regularly for tournaments.

I think we're looking at this the wrong way. I don't think the issue is too many foreign players here its more the fact that English players don't go abroad. If they experienced more technical leagues and different styles they may be better rounded footballers who could keep the ball and adapt to changes during the game.
The fact that not many foreign clubs bother with our players is a reflection of their cost and thei technical incompetence, apart from the very rare few.

Or flip that and say not enough English players go abroad because they dont shine in the prem because too many foreign imports
Apart from the very rare few

How do we think bale will do in Spain? He's less skillfull than ronaldo but can run as fast and probably has a better shot, for me they are very similar so will be interesting to see how they play in the same side.

As a fan of Spanish football, I've given this a bit of thought...and come to the conclusion that I don't know.

It's easy to see why he'll bomb...namely two trick pony, pace and power, he'll get a bit of treatment from some of the South American hatchet men that lurk around a number of La Liga clubs, and spend a lot of time on the treatment table.  Conversely it's easier to play in a good team, and Real have some top players, and are way ahead of most of the rest in Spain, so he should be fine.

Think Real want him for the Champion's League...hoping he can repeat the form of his destruction of Inter in the Guiseppe Meazza.  Will be interesting.

Disagree. I think the Premier League is alot more physical than La Liga. Ronaldo and Messi very rarely get injured. Over here you get a few meaty challenges flying about most weeks, and Bale will join the 'Big Names' a la Messi, Ronaldo, Villa, Pedro, Neymar.. that will be protected by the referee.

I think he'll be back in England in two years time.

I was having an interesting chat with a mate at the FA last week, albeit he’s in a minor role.  The German national team came up a fair bit.  Not only does their general football infrastructure (stadiums, ownership, ticketing etc) seem be a thing of envy at the FA, but also the way the teams play and importantly the way players interact with each on the pitch.  German footballers are generally intelligent folk with an education behind them, whereas most English players are thick as pig shit and can barely think/spk for themselves without the aid of their agent.

It’s not a matter of Germans having better skill levels, but as an example,  when their heads go down they can communicate to each and have enough about them to identify what needs to be done to turn a game around.  Whereas English players just look pissed off and start moaning. 

The FA coaches are no better.  Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but when I was playing 5-10 years ago, the coaches I came across were straight out of the 70’s and 80’s.  A lot of people like ‘old school’, but imo they were generally draconian simpletons who just shouted at players to ‘work harder’ or ‘run around more’, but had very little else to offer. 

Germany has something like 30,000 UEFA-qualified coaches… England has around 2,500.

Agreed, although don't we now have more level 1 football academies (14 across the country) than any other country? 

there was a very interesting discussion on this on R5 live the oter night, with Henry Winter speaking (who speaks an awful lot of sense).
I was under the impression that quotas were impossible due to European human rights/working laws etc.
There were loads of good points made though:
 - the premium paid for english players, meaning clubs will look abroad for cheaper alternatives
 - fact that PL guvnors would like the PL as multi national as possible so they can sell the rights to more countries
 - the power of the clubs and the decline of the perceived importance of the national game
 - the lack of decently qualified coaches as tpg mentioned above
 - english players lack of technical ability, responsibility ang general attitude (prob linked to the coahing above)

I dont think having loads of foreign players in the PL is the issue. In order to complete on the world stage English players need to compete with the worlds best on a weekly basis. Its just finding English players that have the necesaary ability, attitude and getting them into starting 11's.


One texter also made a very good point. From 1966 to 1996 to 1st division was almost exclusively British, yet the national teams were still shite!

I've heard this mentioned a lot, but when you look at the Prem teams 25 man squads this year, the teams with the most British players are all the smaller, lower end of the league, sides.

Look at the transfers this closed season and there aren't many British players in the top 20 by value.There's a premium for England internationals and a handful of hot properties each season. But every season the really stupid money gets spent on foreign players.

And why are the top English players so expensive? Supply and demand I guess. Unsurprisingly England doesn't produce as many talented players as the rest of the world (the rest of the world being quite a lot bigger than England) so the English ones cost more.

In the old days the top 5 or 6 sides would share the England and the better Scottish, Welsh and Irish international between them, and the rest of the league made do with a few up and coming players and journeymen. The TV Money has allowed every side in the league to have at least 3-4 international players.

How Greg Dyke can talk about this as an unforeseen and unintended consequence of the PL is what I can't understand. Not forseeing this just strikes me as a staggering lack of imagination.

The "Spain/Italy/Germany have 42 million UEFA A license coaches while England only have 2" thing is apparently something of a red herring. Apparently when the UEFA qualifications were brought in, national associations could opt to "convert" some of their domestic qualifications to UEFA-level qualifications, even though they weren't in many cases directly comparable. Faced with an uproar from coaches who held existing domestic qualifications, many European countries opted to do so, whereas the English FA didn't and instead made people take the courses to actually earn the new qualifications. So, allegedly, a lot of these 30,000 UEFA A coaches aren't even practising any more and really only have the qualification on paper. A better comparison would be how many active UEFA-licensed coaches there are in each country.

Well as he was one of the people instrumental in bringing in the PL on the pretext that it would benefit the English national side rather than "because the big clubs want to trouser all the TV money I was offering them" he kind of has to say that doesn't he? He didn't not foresee it, he just didn't give a shit about it.

The big problem is that modern footballers don't really give a fuck about playing for their country....with a few recent exceptions like John Terry and fat cunt Lambert who can't believe his luck....the state of the England team at the moment.

I remember that row over appearance money....cheeky cunts...over paid as it is....

Then you have Ryan ( I will play when I want) Giggs.....and England players with mystery injuries when there's a friendly coming up.

I have no expectations any more...to me .....to qualify is the best we will do. We will never be as bad as the jocks but I must admit we are getting there.

easy now

That doesn't address the issue though of why England are going backwards compared to some of our European neighbours - Germany being the one we usually look to.  Their top players earn the same megamoney that ours do.  They play in the same competitions.  Yet when it comes to international football, they excel.  So although I tend to agree that our players don't prioritise playing for England (or "don't give a fuck") that isn't really defining the problem.  The real issue is - why don't they? 

The answer must be something to do with our domestic game and its structure.  The "modern footballers" thing just doesn't work - if it did, Spain, France and Germany would be equally mediocre at international level.