Blattery Will Get You Nowhere

Sepp has been Blattering again. The reason for the 69 year old FIFA President’s latest crusade is that he wants more home grown players to be given a chance and he’s come up with the clever idea of imposing restrictions on the number of foreign players – a scheme that should endear him to Jimmy Hill at least.

According to Sepp, all you have to do is stipulate “six home grown players in each starting team at domestic level”, thereby limiting the side to five foreigners. Simple arithmetic. Well, it’s simple all right and what’s more it’s against European Union law as it stands (though Sepp, with all due modesty, is confident he can sort that one out).

Staying on the theory for a moment, what exactly does the old boy mean by ‘home grown’? English? Welsh? Scottish? Irish? British? Also, if it’s just the starting line-up he’s worried about, is it OK for one of those devious foreign managers to slip in a few non-British players at the earliest available opportunity? And if this proposed legislation applies only at domestic level, presumably it’s fine to field as many foreigners as possible in European competition (assuming your club is good enough to get into it)? Now that should really please the British boys on the books.

Sepp seems to believe that if you just get rid of a lot of those pesky foreigners and actually give more home grown players a chance, they will by some strange alchemy hit the heights – but much of the evidence suggests otherwise.

Take Arsenal for instance. Under the direction of Liam Brady, the club has an excellent Academy (though Mr Blatter may be mortified to learn that they do allow foreigners in there). In recent years the Arsenal youth scheme has produced many exciting young players, among them Jermaine Pennant and David Bentley. On the basis of their talent and potential, both were given first team opportunities and both fell short of the world class standards demanded by the club, which is why one is currently a valued player at Birmingham City and the other has just joined Blackburn Rovers. It is clear that both were frustrated by the lack of first team opportunities at Arsenal, and equally clear that with established stars like Freddie Ljungberg and Robert Pires around, not to mention youngsters of the calibre of Cesc Fabregas, Jose Antonio Reyes, Matthieu Flamini and Robin Van Persie, they would have found it more formidably difficult to make the grade there.

It is certainly arguable that by allowing these two players to move on to other premiership clubs, far from stifling their careers Arsenal have encouraged them. Mr Blatter should consider that. He should also acknowledge that as far as Arsene Wenger and many of our top managers are concerned, it is character, ability and potential that count, not the colour of a player’s skin or his place of birth.

You simply can’t legislate for standards like that.