Soccer: Is Sepp Blatter's six plus five quota suggestion good or bad?

Bad

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by Simon Wright

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If we turn the clock back thirty years it was quite rare for a team to have any foreign players amongst their ranks. If we take England as an example (and accept that Welsh, Irish, and Scottish players don't count as foreign), then there were just a handful of foreign' players in the top English division. Spurs had a couple of Argentinean World Cup winners, Ipswich had a couple of very good Dutch players and after that there was only a handful of others.

Now, of course, it's become quite commonplace for the top English teams to field teams that have just a handful of English players and there have been instances (especially with my team, Arsenal) of teams taking to the field without a single home-based player. It's not just an English phenomenon either, however. In other top leagues such as Italy, Spain, and Germany, there has also been an influx of foreign players.

What FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, has now suggested is that a quota system should be introduced, throughout the world, to limit the number of foreign players that a team can field at any time. That number would be limited to five, so you'd have up to five foreign players and the remaining six would have to be home nationals.

What Blatter is effectively trying to do is to make real what I suggested we do at the start of this article; namely turn the clock back thirty years. Indeed, in the Seventies it was common for domestic leagues to have a quota system. I think in England the rule was that you could only field two foreigners at any time.

There are several reasons why Blatter's plans are unworkable and should be resisted. These include:

1. EU employment law:
Back in the Seventies, the European leagues were free to impose whatever foreign quotas they liked. However, in the intervening years, the European Union has emerged in power and has introduced important rules that protect freedom of movement and employment within the European Union.

Imagine how you'd feel if you were a doctor or an engineer and you were told that you couldn't accept a job offer in France or Germany because of protectionist policies by those countries. You might argue that sport is different but the courts won't see it like that. You can't have one rule for some and another rule for another.

In my opinion, this makes it virtually certain that Blatter (and FIFA) will fail to impose the six plus five quota system in its intended form.

2. Weakening of the product (and effect on TV revenues):
Football is big business. Players routinely earn weekly salaries in excess of 20k (and sometimes in excess of 100k) and this has been made possible through the revenues that the TV companies have poured in.

Football fans and the TV companies have been attracted in droves to the English, Spanish, and Italian leagues because of the quality of football being played (in general) and the big stars on show.

The Seventies might have been better in terms of team equality but the overall football standard, I would argue, is significantly higher now. Instead of just picking the cream of British talent, teams like Man Utd, Chelsea, and Arsenal have been able to pick the cream of talent from all corners of the globe.

Reducing the quality of the football product' is not what most fans want and it certainly isn't what the TV execs want. Blatter's plan might result in a more level playing field but it would come with a cost. Football has never been more popular and it should not be so arrogant as to think that it will always hold that position.

Having said all this, I do have some sympathy with what lies behind Blatter's plans. He'd like to level that playing field and stop the English, Spanish, and Italian sides from dominating world football. I just think he's going about this in the wrong way. Instead of fighting a battle that he can't win (or is very unlikely to win), he should look at the over-bloated Champions League and how the money available from that competition has resulted in haves' and have nots' within individual leagues. There again, though, changing things will be extremely difficult due to the power and self-interest of the top twenty club teams. At least, though, we wouldn't be contravening fairly well enshrined European employment laws!

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