ross.mcfc wrote:Niall Quinns Discopants wrote:ronk wrote:Beefymcfc wrote:Slim, I am taking it that you have read the new regs rather than me, just listening to snippets. Can I ask, in your opinion, what has this actually done for helping home grown (as in English) players come through for the national team?
There's a squad of 8 players who played in England/Wales for 3 years from 18-21 and 17 others. Smaller squads and restrictions on foreign signings mean that we're less likely to see too many people like Benjani on the fringe of the squad.
The U21 thing will mean a big influx of foreign teenagers. As the rules stand at the moment we could bring in a 14 year old and let them leave when they're 17 and they could come back as a "home-grown player". Expect to see that happening, quietly, at first.But most of the young players are English. This rule limits the squad size so we're going to see a lot more young players getting games, they might never play again after they're 21, they're less likely to be loaned out (maybe with recall clauses) and I can see borderline kids, especially ones who won't be ready until after they're 21 for a first team début, pushed out the door.
This is EXACTLY what will happen.
I'm also starting to figure this "foreign Academy" thing we are setting.
They are technically Manchester City players, even if they keep living and playing in their home country. So there's also the loop hole through the problem Slim represented earlier about South Americans. Say we set up a Manchester City Academy in Brazil. We gather all the top talent around the country to play for, technically, for Manchester City. So in five to ten years we will probably have hundreds of promising youngsters playing for "us" and they will all be eligible for our first team as "homegrown".
I'm certain our directors knew about this and all this worldwide Academy thing has been just preparation for this new ruling. I also think that the Club is planning to make business out of this by producing "homegrown talent" to other clubs as well.
This is exactly what I thought when I read that last night. If there are already obvious loop holes that I can spot in it, the clubs will have seen them a mile off and are already taking advantage of this new rule.
This new rule will do nothing to improve the quality of young English players, In Scotland about 5/6 years ago we tried something similar when you were only allowed 3 subs. If you named two players under the age of 21 you were allowed 5 subs.
All it lead to was Celtic and Rangers buying lots of under 21 foreign players.
Another similar issue it gets round is work permits. It's very difficult to get a work permit for a non-EU national, or their parent, however, I assume we wouldn't have those problems in Abu Dhabi. It's our academy, so they are our players, but they aren't in the EU, so aren't restricted by their rules.
I also expect this to get challenged in the European courts. As someone mentioned, Shay Given for example, may not be able to get a job in English football in a few years, despite being good enough due to him not coming here early enough and now being too old - there is no way that will stand up in a court and the next Bosman will result in this whole thing collapsing.