KhRiS
11-07-2005, 08:56
Something I read on another website, thought i could share it with you guy. :bri:
EC’s and EU’s, passports, places of birth and the quota restrictions of individual competitions once exerted a non-negotiable structure upon whom clubs chose to employ, influencing the summer recruitment drive across the continent.
The majority of these regulations were relentlessly, nay inevitably vanquished after the famous case of Belgian footballer John-Marc Bosman in the mid-nineties. How things have changed, and the powers that be are all too aware of this overt cosmopolitanism.
Fears over the increased number of foreign players damaging the development of ‘home-grown’ youngsters has been the glitzy, post-Bosman football world’s folk devil for the last decade. Nowadays football players seem to swap clubs and cross borders quicker than a pasty, sun-seeking Brit, without giving their immigration a second thought. Targets and shortlists of cash-flashing European clubs swell and diminish in the simmering heat of mid-summer amongst a thicket of rumours. This time of the year is manic. One thing’s for sure, football is a massive business – and everyone wants a piece. For these guys, it is far easier to ply your trade abroad than it used to be. But that could be about to change if UEFA and FIFA get their way, and this annual fanatical flurry of foreign purchases may start to stagnate.
The dual-lobbying of the aforementioned administrations has now born fruit, and from 2006/2007 onwards quotas on ‘home grown’ players will be set in stone. There shall be a mandatory number of 4 such players in each 25 man squad registered to take part in UEFA competitions, with the number increasing to 8 by 2008/09.
The men in suits are united in their belief that trouble is brewing on the European continent. FIFA’s director of communications Marcus Siegler said combining efforts with UEFA on the matter was the way forward, “We think alike on this, but we know that it is very difficult to protect young players in the present system. We know that it is much cheaper for the clubs to sign foreigners than it is to educate their own young players.” The idea to limit squad sizes certainly makes sense, frankly pointed out by Lars Christer Olhsson, chief executive of UEFA, "The squad must be limited to 25 to stop some of the bigger clubs hoarding players and not playing them. This is totally unacceptable.”
However, FIFA president Sepp Blatter virtually condemned Europe’s richest clubs for creating a ‘high-stakes trade in humans’ by using their financial muscle to snap up talent from the globe at will. "Compared to 1995-6 when the Bosman ruling on freedom of movement was introduced, there are now 30 percent less players coming from one country playing for their clubs in that country in the top division.” Evidently such stats were unpalatable.
So why the relatively sudden retort? It was only a few years ago that Sepp Blatter incessantly crowed about the universal popularity of the game, and the resulting importance of global penetration and the breaking of cross-cultural boundaries to, in the cold light of day, maximise profit.
A catalyst is no doubt the much-maligned (at least for all you football management game players out there – myself included!) non-EU player issue, and its transformation into the proverbial house of cards. Two words and one name, Maros Koplak.
Never heard of him? Well, he isn’t even a footballer, but it seems his not-so-publicised case at the European Court of Justice was a key wake-up call heeding that ‘something must be done’. Koplak was a Slovakian (hence non-EU) Goalkeeper for a German Handball team in 2003. He was unhappy with a German quota system prohibiting more than two players from non-EU states playing in league matches, as it prevented him from playing regularly, thus damaging his career. After deliberations, the European Court of Justice held that Koplak was lawfully employed by a club established in an EU country and was entitled, under the Association Agreement between Slovakia and the EU, not to be discriminated against in respect of working conditions. Therefore, because he should have the same rights as EU nationals the quota system should not apply to him.
If the court’s judgement is taken to its natural conclusion, the result will be that all sporting organisations in the EU must treat nationals of countries with agreements with the EU the same way they treat EU nationals (e.g. the same non-discrimination provisions). As such, quota systems in respect of foreign players should not therefore apply to players from those countries. Discounting but not forgetting that the EU member states have grown in number since 2003, how many countries have such agreements? Well…there are lots. Over a hundred in fact including Romania, Bulgaria, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa – all footballing nations. Oh well, so much for that rule.
In last year’s Spanish Liga, for instance, clubs were only allowed four non-EU players on their books and could field three of those at any one time. The non-EU issue is the only nationality-based restriction that still exists, and we can all appreciate the direct influence it has on clubs - see Barcelona’s eagerness to offload the world-class talent of Juan Roman Riquelme and Javier Saviola primarily due to their ‘taking-up’ of non-EU spots. Such circumstances could be consigned to history in the not so distant future. If the Koplak case became the rule then, of the some 250 non-UK players registered to play in the English Premiership, only around 50 could actually be considered foreign in terms of such quotas. The issue could explode.
When the talk of introducing home-grown player quotas began, the G14 enterprise (a group consisting of Europe’s richest, most powerful clubs gathered together to protect mutual interests), were unsurprisingly quick to question potential change. General Manager Thomas Kurth re-affirmed that any rule implemented by UEFA/FIFA had to be in-line with EU law, as resulting illegitimacies would see “the clubs carry the burden of the consequences and not UEFA”.
The G14 organisation epitomise the business side of football, and there is the rub. It is about the clashing of Ideology against the Market, principles over profit if you will. That’s all well and good, but when it comes to EU laws of trade and employment, there can be no compromise. Sepp Blatter’s administration has contributed greatly to developing the sport (as product) into an economic, global superpower. Football is a monster in the international business arena because of, amongst other things, the enormous marketing potential it offers. It seems the suits want to have their cake and eat it. Speaking during the preparatory stages of the homegrown player quota, UEFA’s Olhsson outlined the administration’s approach to the European Union; “We’ll be looking to convince people though that this issue is a speciality in sport - a purely sporting rule." He also proclaimed that “clubs have a social and sporting obligation and should be a model for lesser clubs in the same region and to set an example”.
The clashing of themes is almost binary in its clarity. Social awareness, obligations, mentorship to ‘lesser’ colleagues married together with the dog-eat-dog, big business, high capital, win at all costs game that football has become. A match made in heaven it is not. Football is business whether we like it or not. Just ask beleaguered Manchester United fans. Big business has the potential for moral corruption at any juncture. Unwritten rules of good sportsmanship are few and far between, and FIFA et al share the probable delusion that football should be a special case – reaping all the financial benefits from a world that imposes regulations it does not wish to abide by. Eventually, it will have to fall in line.
In any event, the home-grown quota system may not be the elixir the administrations were hoping for. The term cannot and will not account for nationality. The expectation that these four ‘home-grown’ players will be eligible for the national team of that country is a fallacy. This is because applying the criteria of player nationality as a means of in-squad segregation is no longer legal in the football world, under EU employment laws, since the Bosman ruling in 1995.
According to UEFA spokesman Mike Lee, such a set-up would have to put the accent on young ‘home-raised’ players coached in the club’s own academies – nationalities are irrelevant. Indeed, the quota system due for blast off in 2006 states that home-grown players must have come through the club’s youth ranks and developed between the ages of 15 and 21, or been nurtured by other clubs from the same national association for a minimum of three years. We all know that European clubs of various sizes snap up promising teenagers from all over the world and insert them directly into their youth setup – it is hardly local talent, but slots neatly and abidingly within the law.
FIFA and UEFA, and no doubt many fans of the game, clearly view the multi-national, multi-coloured patchwork quilt that top class domestic football has become with a degree of suspicion and discomfort. The current situation is the evolutionary result of the sport’s immense growth and globalisation in the modern era. The efforts to temper and divert natural development, and the force of the market, can be a dangerous game.
National sovereignty is not at stake, but the marker to supposedly protect the local and national ‘feel’ of football has now been laid down. If there is a problem, employing player quotas as remedy now is akin to latching the barn door shut long after the horse has bolted. As we can clearly divulge it is highly debatable whether such a system will ‘work’, and precisely what that would actually mean I do not know.
We could all agree that football can be improved in many ways, but in the main it would concern issues that occur on the field. I hope that the impingement of essentially political and wholeheartedly unsporting regulations upon the game, by individuals who are not part of its fabric, does not prove a step in the wrong direction.
John Rowlands
EC’s and EU’s, passports, places of birth and the quota restrictions of individual competitions once exerted a non-negotiable structure upon whom clubs chose to employ, influencing the summer recruitment drive across the continent.
The majority of these regulations were relentlessly, nay inevitably vanquished after the famous case of Belgian footballer John-Marc Bosman in the mid-nineties. How things have changed, and the powers that be are all too aware of this overt cosmopolitanism.
Fears over the increased number of foreign players damaging the development of ‘home-grown’ youngsters has been the glitzy, post-Bosman football world’s folk devil for the last decade. Nowadays football players seem to swap clubs and cross borders quicker than a pasty, sun-seeking Brit, without giving their immigration a second thought. Targets and shortlists of cash-flashing European clubs swell and diminish in the simmering heat of mid-summer amongst a thicket of rumours. This time of the year is manic. One thing’s for sure, football is a massive business – and everyone wants a piece. For these guys, it is far easier to ply your trade abroad than it used to be. But that could be about to change if UEFA and FIFA get their way, and this annual fanatical flurry of foreign purchases may start to stagnate.
The dual-lobbying of the aforementioned administrations has now born fruit, and from 2006/2007 onwards quotas on ‘home grown’ players will be set in stone. There shall be a mandatory number of 4 such players in each 25 man squad registered to take part in UEFA competitions, with the number increasing to 8 by 2008/09.
The men in suits are united in their belief that trouble is brewing on the European continent. FIFA’s director of communications Marcus Siegler said combining efforts with UEFA on the matter was the way forward, “We think alike on this, but we know that it is very difficult to protect young players in the present system. We know that it is much cheaper for the clubs to sign foreigners than it is to educate their own young players.” The idea to limit squad sizes certainly makes sense, frankly pointed out by Lars Christer Olhsson, chief executive of UEFA, "The squad must be limited to 25 to stop some of the bigger clubs hoarding players and not playing them. This is totally unacceptable.”
However, FIFA president Sepp Blatter virtually condemned Europe’s richest clubs for creating a ‘high-stakes trade in humans’ by using their financial muscle to snap up talent from the globe at will. "Compared to 1995-6 when the Bosman ruling on freedom of movement was introduced, there are now 30 percent less players coming from one country playing for their clubs in that country in the top division.” Evidently such stats were unpalatable.
So why the relatively sudden retort? It was only a few years ago that Sepp Blatter incessantly crowed about the universal popularity of the game, and the resulting importance of global penetration and the breaking of cross-cultural boundaries to, in the cold light of day, maximise profit.
A catalyst is no doubt the much-maligned (at least for all you football management game players out there – myself included!) non-EU player issue, and its transformation into the proverbial house of cards. Two words and one name, Maros Koplak.
Never heard of him? Well, he isn’t even a footballer, but it seems his not-so-publicised case at the European Court of Justice was a key wake-up call heeding that ‘something must be done’. Koplak was a Slovakian (hence non-EU) Goalkeeper for a German Handball team in 2003. He was unhappy with a German quota system prohibiting more than two players from non-EU states playing in league matches, as it prevented him from playing regularly, thus damaging his career. After deliberations, the European Court of Justice held that Koplak was lawfully employed by a club established in an EU country and was entitled, under the Association Agreement between Slovakia and the EU, not to be discriminated against in respect of working conditions. Therefore, because he should have the same rights as EU nationals the quota system should not apply to him.
If the court’s judgement is taken to its natural conclusion, the result will be that all sporting organisations in the EU must treat nationals of countries with agreements with the EU the same way they treat EU nationals (e.g. the same non-discrimination provisions). As such, quota systems in respect of foreign players should not therefore apply to players from those countries. Discounting but not forgetting that the EU member states have grown in number since 2003, how many countries have such agreements? Well…there are lots. Over a hundred in fact including Romania, Bulgaria, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa – all footballing nations. Oh well, so much for that rule.
In last year’s Spanish Liga, for instance, clubs were only allowed four non-EU players on their books and could field three of those at any one time. The non-EU issue is the only nationality-based restriction that still exists, and we can all appreciate the direct influence it has on clubs - see Barcelona’s eagerness to offload the world-class talent of Juan Roman Riquelme and Javier Saviola primarily due to their ‘taking-up’ of non-EU spots. Such circumstances could be consigned to history in the not so distant future. If the Koplak case became the rule then, of the some 250 non-UK players registered to play in the English Premiership, only around 50 could actually be considered foreign in terms of such quotas. The issue could explode.
When the talk of introducing home-grown player quotas began, the G14 enterprise (a group consisting of Europe’s richest, most powerful clubs gathered together to protect mutual interests), were unsurprisingly quick to question potential change. General Manager Thomas Kurth re-affirmed that any rule implemented by UEFA/FIFA had to be in-line with EU law, as resulting illegitimacies would see “the clubs carry the burden of the consequences and not UEFA”.
The G14 organisation epitomise the business side of football, and there is the rub. It is about the clashing of Ideology against the Market, principles over profit if you will. That’s all well and good, but when it comes to EU laws of trade and employment, there can be no compromise. Sepp Blatter’s administration has contributed greatly to developing the sport (as product) into an economic, global superpower. Football is a monster in the international business arena because of, amongst other things, the enormous marketing potential it offers. It seems the suits want to have their cake and eat it. Speaking during the preparatory stages of the homegrown player quota, UEFA’s Olhsson outlined the administration’s approach to the European Union; “We’ll be looking to convince people though that this issue is a speciality in sport - a purely sporting rule." He also proclaimed that “clubs have a social and sporting obligation and should be a model for lesser clubs in the same region and to set an example”.
The clashing of themes is almost binary in its clarity. Social awareness, obligations, mentorship to ‘lesser’ colleagues married together with the dog-eat-dog, big business, high capital, win at all costs game that football has become. A match made in heaven it is not. Football is business whether we like it or not. Just ask beleaguered Manchester United fans. Big business has the potential for moral corruption at any juncture. Unwritten rules of good sportsmanship are few and far between, and FIFA et al share the probable delusion that football should be a special case – reaping all the financial benefits from a world that imposes regulations it does not wish to abide by. Eventually, it will have to fall in line.
In any event, the home-grown quota system may not be the elixir the administrations were hoping for. The term cannot and will not account for nationality. The expectation that these four ‘home-grown’ players will be eligible for the national team of that country is a fallacy. This is because applying the criteria of player nationality as a means of in-squad segregation is no longer legal in the football world, under EU employment laws, since the Bosman ruling in 1995.
According to UEFA spokesman Mike Lee, such a set-up would have to put the accent on young ‘home-raised’ players coached in the club’s own academies – nationalities are irrelevant. Indeed, the quota system due for blast off in 2006 states that home-grown players must have come through the club’s youth ranks and developed between the ages of 15 and 21, or been nurtured by other clubs from the same national association for a minimum of three years. We all know that European clubs of various sizes snap up promising teenagers from all over the world and insert them directly into their youth setup – it is hardly local talent, but slots neatly and abidingly within the law.
FIFA and UEFA, and no doubt many fans of the game, clearly view the multi-national, multi-coloured patchwork quilt that top class domestic football has become with a degree of suspicion and discomfort. The current situation is the evolutionary result of the sport’s immense growth and globalisation in the modern era. The efforts to temper and divert natural development, and the force of the market, can be a dangerous game.
National sovereignty is not at stake, but the marker to supposedly protect the local and national ‘feel’ of football has now been laid down. If there is a problem, employing player quotas as remedy now is akin to latching the barn door shut long after the horse has bolted. As we can clearly divulge it is highly debatable whether such a system will ‘work’, and precisely what that would actually mean I do not know.
We could all agree that football can be improved in many ways, but in the main it would concern issues that occur on the field. I hope that the impingement of essentially political and wholeheartedly unsporting regulations upon the game, by individuals who are not part of its fabric, does not prove a step in the wrong direction.
John Rowlands