Home
Blatter's quota vote could force clubs to cull foreigners
By Nick Harris
The most radical shake-up of football in decades could be just months away after Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, said yesterday that he wants a vote on quotas for home-grown players to take place in May. Under Blatter's proposal, club sides would be forced to field a minimum of six players eligible for the national team of the country in which they play. In England, this would mean teams such as Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool being fundamentally dismantled and reshaped to include at least six English players for all games.
In theory, this could happen as soon as August. In practice, major legal hurdles will probably prevent that. But Blatter's announcement is the strongest signal yet that Fifa, world football's governing body, intends to do everything in its power to introduce quotas in some form as soon as possible. The springboard for the announcement was a meeting on Monday of the Fifa Football Committee, a group of prominent players, former players, coaches and officials, including a representative of the players' international union, FIFPro. Those present included Blatter, Franz Beckenbauer, Pele and Sven Goran Eriksson.
Eriksson, whose Manchester City side is dominated by foreign players, was presumably among those who voiced, according to a Fifa statement,
"certain doubts as to [the] effectiveness" of the so-called "6+5" plan. But the same statement also announced that the Committee "considers the 6+5 rule in principle as necessary, and also advisable from a moral point of view." Most significantly, Blatter plans to submit the 6+5 rule to the Fifa
congress in Sydney in May. A Fifa spokesman said: "Until a firm agenda is finalised a few weeks before, we can't guarantee a vote, but the Committee meeting seems to indicate there will be a vote on the application of the rule." Barring an uncharacteristic change of heart by Blatter, Fifa's 208 member associations will be asked in May to vote "yes" or "no" to the introduction of the 6+5 rule. A simple majority carries sway in such votes, and a "yes" would set in train an extraordinary change in the world game, not to mention inevitable legal challenges.
The Football Association, which would have a vote, has gone on record as saying "we prefer meritocracy to quotas" but would not decide on a voting stance before consultation with Fifa "and the stakeholders of the game in England". The FA's representative on the Committee, Trevor Brooking, was not at Monday's meeting, and the FA was unaware of any plan by Blatter to put the 6+5 rule to a vote in May. Under EU law, quotas preventing EU nationals from working in other EU countries are illegal, but Blatter believes the EU might listen to pleas for change because of "the
specificity of sport in the new European Treaty." He hopes that if football itself democratically votes for the quotas, the EU may allow them. As in all politics, yesterday's announcement is probably more the start of a bargaining position than anything.
Very interesting! My 2 bits:
1. I think this will get formal approval - this allows smaller or poorer leagues to retain more of their talent! I think a majority will vote for this. On the other hand, those leagues might not want to lose the money they currently get from lucrative transfers from the Big 3. Lets see how this turns out...
2. Remember how things were before EU - when in Serie A, you were allowed to field only 3 non-italians? I don't think that was such a bad thing... now this rule will take us back to those days in a way, except that it will be 5 instead of 3. I am not completely against this rule, even though this will impact Inter the worst in Italy. We need 3-4 top quality Italians now!!
3. The main reason I like this rule is that there will be less number of foriegners playing in the Big 3 leagues... which means that old traditional teams like Ajax, PSV, Benfica, even Red Star Belgrade, etc will be able to retain more of their talent, and be a bigger force in european football - we need that, currently the CL is basically between the english, spanish and italian teams, and its becoming a bit monotonous!!
