Posted May 27, 200817 yr Tuesday, 27 May 2008 16:11 UK BBC Sport News England player numbers at new low The pool of talent available to Fabio Capello fell away alarmingly last season http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44692000/gif/_44692260_premiership_players_466.gif The number of England-qualified players starting in the Premier League dropped to an all-time low last season, research by BBC Sport has found. Only 170 of the 498 players who started matches in the top flight in 2007-08 were English - just 34.1% of the total. It marks a big slide from 2006-07, when 191 (38%) of the starters were English. "The number is important because that's what I can choose from," said England manager Fabio Capello when asked about BBC Sport's findings on Tuesday. "But more important is quality - the level of the player. At the moment the total is 34% but the (quality) level is high. "The work being done in the academies is very important. We probably have to change the system of training for young players. "At Under-21, and younger national teams, we have a lot of good players. "For the future, I hope next season is not 34% but 40%. It will be better for me and England football." At first glance, Capello's diplomatic answer would seem to make complete sense. After all, only last week two English clubs played in the Champions League final and 10 of the 22 starters were English. But the fact remains that his side is preparing for two end-of-season friendlies this week - against the USA on Wednesday and Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday - and not this summer's Euro 2008. Sepp Blatter, the president of world football's governing body Fifa, is convinced he knows the answer to England's problems: restricting the number of foreign starters each club is allowed to five. Despite widespread concern his plan is incompatible with European Union employment law (and robust opposition from the Premier League on principle), Blatter is determined to press on with his "six plus five" scheme. If successful, this move would represent a huge challenge for English clubs. Last season, fewer than one in five starting line-ups would have met Blatter's quota. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44692000/gif/_44692259_english_premiership_466.gif West Ham showed the most faith in English talent, Arsenal the least On average, there were only four players available for England duty in each Premier League starting line-up last season. Arsenal had the lowest number of English starters, averaging 0.34 per match, while West Ham had the highest number, with 6.61. The Hammers and Aston Villa (6.42) were the only two clubs in the Premier League to average more than six English starters last term, while the big four of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, averaged just 2.64 per game. These figures compare unfavourably with the situation in Scotland, where there were 6.27 Scotland-qualified players per starting line-up in the Scottish Premier League. While only 18% of English line-ups met the quota, 56.8% of Scotland's starting XIs would have satisfied Blatter. In fact, six of the 12 SPL teams - Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Motherwell and Rangers - met the "six plus five" rule in every match. Scotland, of course, also failed to qualify for Euro 2008 but the English numbers are also considerably worse than Europe's other major leagues. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44692000/gif/_44692280_english_non-english.gif English clubs are more reliant on foreign talent than their European counterparts Taking the last weekend of the season as a snapshot, the disparity in resources the England manager has at his disposal when compared to his counterparts on the continent becomes quickly apparent. The final round of fixtures in Italy - the home of the current world champions - saw 7.3 Italians start per Serie A team. In Spain it was 6.9 Spaniards per La Liga side, and in Germany it was 4.9 Germans in each Bundesliga XI. Those three nations all qualified for Euro 2008 and are once again among the bookmakers' favourites to claim success when the final is played in Vienna on 29 June. The Premier League, however, rejected any attempt to link England's failings on the international stage with the number of foreign players appearing at domestic level. "Merely looking at numbers of England players in the Premier League is a blunt and misleading measure as to how well the national team should be doing," a Premier League statement explained. "After all, in the 70s and 80s the vast majority of players in the top flight were eligible for England yet we routinely struggled to qualify for tournaments, let alone perform in them. "Our figures show this season nearly 40% of the starting XIs were qualified to play for England, 10 of whom played in the Champions League Final, arguably the highest standard of football in the world. "There is no shortage of players at the highest level to pick from but we all want to see more Englishmen capable of performing at this level. "That is why Premier League clubs invest more than £40m a season in youth development, that is why the Premier League, along with the FA and the Football League, are driving through reforms to ensure the quality of coaching and player development is of the highest standard. "We must raise standards, not implement something that will never happen under European law and would only create a broader pool of average players rather than a deeper one of the right level of talent for Premier League clubs and England." That Premier League clubs like to scour the globe for playing talent is not news to anybody but what will worry Capello and his bosses at the Football Association, this country's governing body, is that the situation is deteriorating. The previous lowest number of English starters had been 179 in the 2002-03 season. There were 207 English starters in the 2000-01 season, according to the "Meltdown" report produced by the Professional Footballers' Association last year. This figure fell to 199 in 2001-02 and slid to 179 the following season. There was a small rise in the number of English starters in each of the next four seasons but the heavy fall this season will cause concern at the FA's Soho Square headquarters no matter what Capello says in public. Do you think the Premiership should have national quotas or not, and do you think it is harming the national side?
May 27, 200817 yr I don't think it's harming the national side, we didn't qualify for the Euros purely because we weren't good enough and made poor tactical decisions and the players didn't perform. Now I don't care what anyone says, on paper England have one of the best teams in the world and they've some exceptional young talent coming through. The big clubs have started taking care in their youth players now, not just English too. But sometimes players just aren't good enough and football is as much a business as it is a sport these days. Now this 6+5 rule that Blatter wants to impose, yes, it's a good rule in principle but I don't know whether it would work, infact I know it wouldn't. A huge reason why the Big Four lack a lot of English players is because they're so expensive because they're English! Now at the moment we're rife with inflation and if the 6+5 rule came in English players (and in other countries too) would be going for stupidly high prices, and far more than they'd actually be worth. I'm sure there'd be human rights issues if this rule came into place though? You'd be limiting players to play their trade abroad unless they were really the cream of the crop. I hope the rule gets thrown out of the window, as it'll make things worse, not better imo.
May 27, 200817 yr You'd be limiting players to play their trade abroad unless they were really the cream of the crop. I hope the rule gets thrown out of the window, as it'll make things worse, not better imo. But there's nothing stopping a club employing 100 foreign nationals. OK they won't be able to use it all, but they can't anyway. And footballers have by FAR the most lenient rules when coming to work here.
May 27, 200817 yr Tuesday, 27 May 2008 16:11 UK BBC Sport News England player numbers at new low The pool of talent available to Fabio Capello fell away alarmingly last season http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44692000/gif/_44692260_premiership_players_466.gif The number of England-qualified players starting in the Premier League dropped to an all-time low last season, research by BBC Sport has found. Only 170 of the 498 players who started matches in the top flight in 2007-08 were English - just 34.1% of the total. It marks a big slide from 2006-07, when 191 (38%) of the starters were English. I don't buy into this being a problem. There are less English players in the Premiership because the Premiership has got stronger. Look at the two teams in the final of the Champions League, what country did the majority of them play for? England. Lampard, Carrick, A. Cole, Hargreaves, Ferdinand, Terry, Brown, Scholes, Rooney, J. Cole all played in the final. There is 10 players for a England team already. :dance: Champions League final players by country. England 10 players France 5 Portugal 3 Brazil 3 Ireland 2 No other country with more then 1 player. Edited May 27, 200817 yr by SkiBaBopBaDopBop
May 28, 200817 yr I totally agree - if Capello can't pick 23 great players out a pool of 170 deemed worthy of playing in the best league in the world then he has a problem. Mind you, Sven still managed to pick the worst forward line in International history at the last World Cup eh?
May 28, 200817 yr But there's nothing stopping a club employing 100 foreign nationals. OK they won't be able to use it all, but they can't anyway. And footballers have by FAR the most lenient rules when coming to work here. I agree that footballers have very lenient rules from coming to play their trade in our country, but that's from players outside of the EU normally. This "6+5" rule goes against the EU laws, so even if FIFA give it the go ahead then there'll still be a long way before the rule is implemented. I'd love to see lots of English players playing, but the fact is if they were good enough they would be playing. All clubs have youth acadamies. I agree, maybe some of them aren't always given a chance but this is football. The only people that would suffer from this rule would be the fans of the top clubs in all the different leagues.
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