Return of the 3 foreigner rule?

[Shinboners]

....or at least some version of it.

From Red Issue:

UEFA to force clubs to promote home grown players.


Top Premiership clubs such as Chelsea and Arsenal may be forced into a radical overhaul of their squads and transfer policy next summer if UEFA push through new rules to enforce quotas of 'home-grown' players next season.
The UEFA executive will meet in Vienna on Nov 11 to finalise plans which would force all clubs in Europe to have between six and eight players in their squad who are `home-grown'.

The criteria for this will not be based on nationality, but on whether a player was developed at any academy in this country.


UEFA are aware that top clubs would try to get around the rule by increasing their squad size, and another radical rule would limit squad sizes to 25 registered professionals. This will force the bigger clubs to drastically cut down the number of players in their first-team squads.


Chelsea - who have spent almost £200 million on mostly imported talent since Roman Abramovich bought the club 18 months ago - are known to be opposed to the plan. Manchester United and Arsenal - members of the powerful G14 group of top European clubs - are also thought to be against it.


But UEFA are confident they can push their plan through with the support of smaller clubs largely because they do not need European Commission approval. The criteria for specifying who is 'home-grown' are not based on nationality so there is no breach of the Treaty of Rome, which stipulates that any rule that seeks to limit the right of clubs to employ a player from another EU country would be illegal. The G14 would therefore have no legal grounds for objecting.

 

[DB10]

THey'd have to define what "developed" is as well, because we can say we developed Reyes even further from what Sevilla did. Lots of ways to get around this but I doubt it'll go through - UEFA do not want to go head to head with the G14.

 

[moomba]

We'd be alright. In our squad of 25 we would have SWP, Barton, Flood, Ellegard, Onuoha, Jordan, Bischoff (although he is on loan to Wolves atm), D'Laryea, BWP, McCarthy and possibly Croft.

 

[Arsene Wenger]

developed is the word

It would be a pretty big call

 

[PowerKop]

Wont happen.

Henry, Paddy, Cesc, Reyes everyone in Arsenal's squad has developed there game at Arsenal

 

[Weaver]

Henry, Paddy, Cesc, Reyes everyone in Arsenal's squad has developed there game at Arsenal

It says developed at an ACADEMY in the country.

Doesn't have to be your academy so Campbell, Cole, Taylor, Fabregas, Pennant, Bentley all qualify for Arsenal.

In the Man City example James, Thatcher, Fowler etc will all have gone through an academy in England.

The 25-man squad will be more of a concern. Could actually hurt junior development by squeezing out the first and second year professionals who are often player 26-30 at a club. Saints have a squad of 34 for example, a lot of them kids who would otherwise miss out.

 

[DB10]

It says developed at an ACADEMY in the country.

What do they define as "deveoped at an academy" though? We could quite easily say Vieira is part of that as well, since he ... is.

 

[Borgsta]

developed at an academy is obviously referring to youth squads and reserves. I mean it says 'academy' how much more obvious could it be?

 

[DB10]

I mean we could say we "developed" Reyes further as a player. We could say we developed Lehmann even further by getting him to stop being a nutcase, and so on ... there's lots of loopholes of this.

Majority of our team would've been developed at London Colney, then.

 

[moomba]

I suspect it must mean that you would have to play underage matches to qualify. For Arsenal, they could put Fabregas in the U18's and he would be considered to have been developed at their academy. Vieira wouldnt qualify.

For Man City James, Thatcher etc would only qualify at the team they originally came from (Watford, Millwall etc).

 

[Lowie01]

Won't happen. The only way it may possibly occur is if it happened gradually over a period of a few years, but there are way too many vague areas and the big clubs simply have way too much pulling power for UEFA.

 

[Weaver]

For Man City James, Thatcher etc would only qualify at the team they originally came from (Watford, Millwall etc).

Doesn't say that. Just says an Academy in the country.

In England there is a formal apprenticeship scheme where a player gets a 3-year traineeship.

For example at Southampton we have Wallis-Taylor (Cyprus), Tim Sparv (Finland), Feleciano (Portugal) who are 2nd year scholars and Eddie Ancalet (Tanzania) and Andrew Surman (South Africa) who are 3rd year scholars.

 

[moomba]

Oops, misread that. I would imagine that it would be a bit of a nothing rule in that case. I doubt there would be a club in England that would have to make significant changes.

I am presuming that the definition of academy would also include various youth development programmes/traineeship schemes in place before the academy system.