Greg Dyke is trying to destroy the Premier League as we know
it. His reasons are clear. He believes that it is his job to do
something to improve the English national team no matter what the cost. Unfortunately, he has put his focus on the “do
something” rather than on “improve” or “the cost.”
I recognize that he believes he has good reasons for his
actions. However, as an American I don’t
care very much about the English national team.
To be fair, I am sure Dyke does not care that I don’t care.
However, the Premier League is not and should not be in
business to strengthen the English national team.
The changes that have already been implemented and the changes that have
been proposed will weaken the Premier League as an international attraction and
hurt its claim to be the best league in the world. Certainly, the League will suffer a
significant loss in internal competitive balance. As unbalanced as the Premier League is right
now, it is still more balanced than the other major European Leagues. That will probably change. The changes as a whole will also weaken
English clubs in the UEFA competitions. The English national coefficient is already falling. With these changes it will fall further and fewer English clubs may qualify for the Champions League.
Dyke has already taken one major step to lower the average
quality of play in the Premier League by making it harder to get work
permits. He has now proposed an even
worse change to the rules governing home grown players which will make it
more difficult for any club to challenge the established elite while reducing the quality of play by all clubs, including the
elite. If these proposed rules are implemented
in England, but not in the rest of Europe, English teams will have signed on to
a Champions League (and Europa League) suicide pact. While there is some indication that UEFA
might go along with these changes (see
here) that would not be good news. It would simply mean that more people have climbed aboard the stupid
train. Even if UEFA does implement similar rules for
the rest of Europe, the rules are still not likely to
accomplish Dyke’s purported goals.
Any improvement in England’s national team is a relative
thing. If England gets better and other
nations do not, England is improved. If
England stays the same and other nations get worse, England is also
improved. But if every nation improves,
England has, effectively, not improved.
Yet, if these rules are likely to improve England’s national team than
surely they are just as likely to improve the national team of any other nation
that adopts them. Thus, if the rules
are adopted throughout Europe, it is a wash and no one is helped.
Unfortunately, this is a complicated issue and I am going to
have to break my analysis into several pieces. I will start with a discussion of the rules
changes that take effect on 1 May 2015.
I want to emphasize that I have not yet been able to locate the official
rule changes with their official wording so I am relying upon the descriptions
posted by the FA on its web site and other places on the internet. If I reading
the rules for 2014-2015 correctly, the new rules are due to be officially published
by May 1, 2015.
The rule change that has already taken effect changed the
rules governing the issuance of work permits for non-EU players. Descriptions of the rules have been published
in identical terms on website after website.
The Southern Daily Echo posted them here.
The new rules:
1. Players currently
must have played at least 75 per cent of their country's senior competitive
international matches over the past two years. That will change so the required
number of caps is staggered according to the country's status. Players will have
to have played at least 30 per cent of matches in the last two years if their
country is in the top 10, at least 45 per cent if it is ranked between 11th and
20th, at least 60 per cent if between 21st and 30th and at least 75 per cent if
between 31st and 50th.
2. Players currently
must have played for a country ranked in FIFA’s top 70 when rankings are
averaged over the two years prior to the date of application. That bar will be
lowered to the top 50 countries under the new regulations.
3. All players are
currently measured over the last two years. The new regulations will allow
leeway for players aged 21 or under, who are assumed to be less established and
therefore only need fulfil the criteria for the previous 12 months.
4. Under the current
system, the appeals process is subjective and dictated by supporting evidence
such as scout reports, videos and managers’ references. The panel decides if
the player is of the “highest calibre” and invariably it approves, with 79 per
cent of applications successful. The new appeals process will be less lenient
and based on “predominantly objective measures”, such as agreed transfer value
and wage, domestic club experience, European competition experience and
international record.
5. The FA estimates
that 33 per cent of the players who gained entry under the old system would not
have been granted a work visa under the new rules. That means that over the
last five years there would have been 42 fewer non-European players playing in
the Premier and Football Leagues.
The primary immediate effect of these rules is that it will
be easier to sign players from countries ranked in the top 30 and very much
harder to sign players from countries ranked from 51 to 75. It will also be harder to successfully appeal
the denial of a work permit for an otherwise qualified player who does not meet
the new requirements. It will probably
be easier to get permits for a few younger players who have just started their
international careers. I have seen
claims the appeals process will consider whether the transfer fee was over £10 million. I have no idea whether that will be a hard
and fast rule.
Since work permits are not required for players from EU countries
and some others, such as Switzerland and Norway, these rules only directly affect
players from around 30 to 35 countries since about 25 of the top 70 countries
are EU countries and the rules haven’t really changed for countries ranked from
31 to 50.
I toyed with looking at the rosters of various countries
over the past two years to see who is or is not eligible under these rules, but
decided that it involved too much work for too little gain. Instead, I just want to focus on the effect
of these rules.
Non-EU players will become rarer in English football and the
average quality of the ones who do play in England will be higher. If the rules have the intended effect, these players
will be replaced by English players who will of necessity be of lower quality
because English players of that quality would already be in the Premier League. On the other hand, some English players in the Premier League would get more playing time. The change will particularly affect the less
rich clubs because they are the ones who would normally purchase and play
non-EU players with fewer international appearances or from lower ranked
nations. (For example, under these rules
we could never have signed Guly.) The
richer clubs would continue to buy top players.
Under the new rules, it would have been difficult or impossible for Southampton, Swansea, and
Liverpool to sign players like Mane, Bony, and Coutinho. Instead, they would play in other European
Leagues and not come to England until they had played in enough competitive
internationals or were expensive enough to win their work permit appeal.
Admittedly, since we can now afford to pay £10
million transfer fees, we might be able to adequately deal with these
changes. However, if that turns out to
be the case, it merely means that we have become one of the richer clubs the
rules unfairly favor.
It is difficult to
see how these changes will help the English national team. More England players will be playing in
the Premier League but these will not be players who are good enough for the
national team. The national team players already in the Premier League might get a little more playing time, but maybe not. English players who are sitting on the bench at Arsenal, for example, will not necessarily play more because Arsenal's non-EU players are of high enough callibre that they will still be able to get their work permits. English national team callibre players playing for Southampton are already getting all the playing time they need. These rules will increase the chance that richer clubs would want our players. If they move to the richer clubs, they will get less playing time.
I suppose the theory is that, in the absence of the mid-level
non-EU players, clubs will give young English players a chance and some of them
will unexpectedly develop into stars.
This could happen, but it won’t happen very often. Most of these players will expectedly develop
into mediocre players who simply weaken the competitive level of the Premier
League. Moreover, since the big clubs will
still be able to get their non-EU players, the primary effect will be to weaken
the other clubs—making the league even less balanced.
However much I
object to these changes, they are done. I
also recognize that they will probably have only a minor effect on the Premier
League. It is the new proposals changing
the Home Grown player rules that will be disastrous and I will discuss them in
my next post.
