FIFA - Shooting themseleves in the foot?
Sorry for dragging up old news but it's the first time I have had a chance to comment on something I feel strongly about. As an Arsenal fan it really gets on my nerves when people go on about Arsenal only fielding foreign players, it happened again, as I'm sure it will do more often this season, against Liverpool when there wasn't an English playing for Arsenal.
As we all know by now FIFA have plans afoot to introduce a 6+5 ruling which limits the number of players in any side to 5 foreign, or more accurately 6 English or home grown players. Apart from the fact this is a total no starter from an EU perspective Arsenal are well set for this anyway given we have plenty of players in the current set up who would easily qualify as home grown, it's the likes of Chelsea and Spurs I worry about.
Anyway what I think is odd is that FIFA or more particularly Sepp Blatter has changed all manner of things in the game, most noticeably the format of World Cups to make it easy for the minnows to have a bite of the cake. Now I don't have a problem with this but if, as they want, teams will be restricted to 6 foreign players what’s going to happen to all the players from what you might call lesser nations? The bigger teams will simply keep the best players who are generally from the bigger footballing nations such as Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Brazil and Argentina. What about players like Hleb, Eboue, Toure even. Sure some of the bigger stars will stay but all I can see happening is nations like the Ivory Coast, Belarus having just one or two players at decent clubs and their national side suffers as a result.
The other thing that gets me is the idea that if we pack English clubs with English players they will suddenly become good, how does that work? Arsenal have in fact produced some top English talent over the last few years, Bentley, Upson, Pennant, Cole and Sidwell and have plenty coming through who look half decent. The simple fact of the matter is they have never been good enough or more specifically in some of the cases think the world owes them a living. Give me Flamini, a hard working player committed to the club and happy to fight for his place over a muppet like Cole who swerves off the road over £5,000 a week.
As we all know by now FIFA have plans afoot to introduce a 6+5 ruling which limits the number of players in any side to 5 foreign, or more accurately 6 English or home grown players. Apart from the fact this is a total no starter from an EU perspective Arsenal are well set for this anyway given we have plenty of players in the current set up who would easily qualify as home grown, it's the likes of Chelsea and Spurs I worry about.
Anyway what I think is odd is that FIFA or more particularly Sepp Blatter has changed all manner of things in the game, most noticeably the format of World Cups to make it easy for the minnows to have a bite of the cake. Now I don't have a problem with this but if, as they want, teams will be restricted to 6 foreign players what’s going to happen to all the players from what you might call lesser nations? The bigger teams will simply keep the best players who are generally from the bigger footballing nations such as Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Brazil and Argentina. What about players like Hleb, Eboue, Toure even. Sure some of the bigger stars will stay but all I can see happening is nations like the Ivory Coast, Belarus having just one or two players at decent clubs and their national side suffers as a result.
The other thing that gets me is the idea that if we pack English clubs with English players they will suddenly become good, how does that work? Arsenal have in fact produced some top English talent over the last few years, Bentley, Upson, Pennant, Cole and Sidwell and have plenty coming through who look half decent. The simple fact of the matter is they have never been good enough or more specifically in some of the cases think the world owes them a living. Give me Flamini, a hard working player committed to the club and happy to fight for his place over a muppet like Cole who swerves off the road over £5,000 a week.
posted by Andrew Gilfrin at 5:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home