The Premier League, all things being equal, probably does
want the English National Team to do well.
However, that cannot and should not be the major focus of the league in
the same way that the NBA would probably like the United States Basketball team
to win World Championships and Olympic Gold Medals but is not specifically
structured to facilitate that. However,
even if we assume that improving the English National Football Teams is a
worthy goal that would justify changing the rules to the competitive detriment
of the Premier League, there is little reason to believe that the proposed rule
changes will help very much.
Consider this article.
Dyke is quoted saying “suddenly an
English kid who was out on loan at four different places, who was touch and go
to get a game in the first team, is suddenly the top scorer in English
Football.” He continues, “it’s great
news. How many more Harry Kanes are out
there who just can’t get a game?” While
obviously, we cannot be sure, the answer is probably not very many.
Dyke’s reasoning is flawed.
Look at the pretty chart at top of the article. This chart summarizes, without the specific
names, the same information I provided in part two of this series. (Found here.) In designating players as home grown, the
chart uses the current rules, not the proposed new rules. Nevertheless, there are a lot of grey,
unfilled roster slots. Each of these
slots could be filled by an English player right now. Foreign players, whether highly qualified or
mediocre, are not preventing Premier League clubs from signing English players
to fill these slots. Instead, it is the
Premier League clubs who, after evaluating the available English talent, have
determined that the English players they could afford are worse than nothing. Thus, the primary barrier to more good
English Players playing in the Premier League is the fact that the people
responsible for making roster decisions do not think there are more good
English players.
While it is certainly possible that the clubs are doing a
poor job of identifying and evaluating English talent, they have a strong
financial incentive to scout, find, and play good English players. Certainly, for example, Southampton last year
demonstrated the benefits, both on the field and in the financial books, that
can accrue to a team who locates and plays good English talent.
Dyke’s perspective on Harry Kane and the way Tottenham chose
to develop him also appears to be misguided.
Harry Kane was born on 28 July 1993.
At the beginning of the 2009-2010 season, he was 16 years old. In that season, he played 22 times for the
under-18s and scored 18 goals. This was,
of course, an outstanding performance.
Possibly, Kane at that point would have been good enough to play for a
Premier League club. Possibly not. However, in 2009-2010, Tottenham finished in
fourth place and qualified for the Championship League. Given their need to compete in the 2010-2011
Champions League and maintain their Premier League status, Tottenham could not
reasonably be expected to experiment with an untried 17-year-old striker. Certainly, they were not going to give him
enough playing time for him to develop his skills.
Instead, over the next several years Tottenham loaned Kane
out to four different clubs. Based on
the stats and other information, it appears that he played well but not so well
that he seemed like a certain English star of the future. Why should Tottenham be faulted for sending a
good young player out on loan where he could play first team football at an
appropriate level rather than retaining him at the home club where he would
primarily play with the reserves? In
fact, contrary to Dyke’s implied suggestion that foreign players were blocking
Kane’s development, it seems that Tottenham actually followed a sensible plan
of development for Kane that should be viewed, at least as of now, as an
unqualified success. Kane’s performance
this year is not an illustration of what is wrong with the current system, but
a success story. At 21 years of age he
was given a chance to play his way onto both his club’s starting squad and the
English National team.
In researching this article, I read “The Way Forward:
Solutions to England’s Football Failings” by Matthew Whitehouse. It seems likely that Whitehouse would endorse
Dyke’s proposed changes. It is also
clear that the English National Team is Whitehouse’s highest priority. Nevertheless, an analysis of the book reveals
that these changes in the home grown rules should be one of the FA’s lowest
priorities. According to Whitehouse,
England does not have enough qualified youth coaches and many of them are
poorly trained. Even worse, they do not
teach English youngsters how to play football in the correct fashion.
Whitehouse sometimes takes what appear to be contradictory
positions. For example, he argues both
that English boys play too much football at a young age and do not play enough
football at a young age. He also
believes that English coaches put too much pressure on boys not to make
mistakes so that they are scared to take the chances that are necessary to learn
more creative and technical skills. He
contends that some boys are weeded out of the system at too young of an age
simply because they are mistakenly believed to be too small or not good enough. In another part of the book, Whitehouse
expressed a belief that it is important to get the best players playing
together as soon as possible. He does
not explain how this can be done without weeding out some players at too young
an age.
Setting aside the internal contradictions, the primary focus
of Whitehouse’s argument is that more needs to be done to give young English
players better coaching and more opportunities to play at the highest possible
level so they are constantly challenged to improve. Incidentally, Whitehouse, on several
occasions, points to Southampton’s academy as one of the few places in England
where things are done correctly.
While I do not purport to be an expert on the best way to
train youngsters to become professional footballers, I do know that relatively
few youngsters will become professional footballers and even fewer of those
will become elite footballers that will strengthen the English team. It may well be that England and the Premier
League are not doing enough to support grassroots football, but the primary
purpose of grassroots football should be to provide healthy exercise for young
people and to teach them to incorporate regular exercise into their lives. Identifying and training more elite
footballers should be nothing more than a happy by-product.
There are hundreds of areas where young people can learn
useful skills and have a chance to excel.
Football is by no means the most important one of them. Certainly, for example, England could use a
few more elite cricket players or golfers or, for that matter, school teacher,
doctors, nurses, writers, and, perhaps, consulting detectives. To the extent Whitehouse or, for that matter,
Dyke wants to push more kids into playing football at the expense of other
things they can or should be doing including studying, reading, learning computer
skills, cooking their own meals, or even playing video games, they do not have their priorities
straight. The United Kingdom as a nation
should place its emphasis on educating its young people, not on encouraging
them to put in the 10,000 hours of practice that Whitehouse believes is
necessary to become an elite football player.
In fact, no one could fault the nation’s priorities if it decides to buy
its footballers from abroad and send more of its young adults to college.
In response to the most recent television deal, the Premier
League has announced that it will spend one billion pounds of its television
revenue on grassroots football and other worthwhile causes. (See here.
) Given that the Premier League has a
vested interest in the development in young English footballers this sounds
like a worthwhile use of its television money.
However, the Premier League could just as reasonably decide, instead, to
spend the same amount of money training nurses.
In any case, it is difficult to see the path to the English
National Team that Dyke believes would arise out of his proposed rules. Possibly he thinks that English Clubs are
filled with young English players who are good enough to play in the Premier
League but are not being given the opportunity.
This seems unlikely. A
significant number of young English players have been playing in the Premier
League in the past several years. Very
likely at the top teams, the path to the first team for such players is blocked
but at teams like Southampton, Liverpool, Swansea and Everton, a path to the
first team exists. The new rules could
very well reduce the opportunities for good young players because they would virtually
compel the richest clubs to gather up as many potentially elite players as they
could by age 15 in order to fill their club trained roster slots.
An example of how the new rules could go wrong is
illustrated by what happened to Luke Shaw this year. Last year, Luke Shaw was Southampton’s
undisputed number one left back. So long
as he was fit, he got to play. As a
result, he was given every opportunity to develop his skills by playing at the
highest level. He was bought for a huge
amount of money by Manchester United who paid him a lot of money but sat him on
the bench for most of the year.
Admittedly, he missed many games due to injuries but he did not play in
every game where he was healthy.
(Moreover, the Southampton medical staff might have done a better job of
keeping him healthy.)
If, indeed, Luke Shaw is the English Left back for the next
decade, how has the English National Team benefited by having him at Manchester
United? Is there some magical process by
which a player learns to be a better player by sitting around and earning a
fortune while watching other even more expensive players play football? Or would Shaw have learned more if he had
spent an additional year at Southampton?
Under the new rules the rich English clubs will have every
incentive to buy up as many of the good young English players as they can in
order to fill the roster spots. Most of
these players will then sit on the bench at big clubs. The same problem will exist for older English
players. Under the new rules, clubs will
need up to ten association trained players.
Manchester United and other rich clubs will fill their rosters with the
best English players they can find even if those players are not good enough to
play regularly. As a result, instead
playing repeatedly for mid table or top half league clubs, many of the best
English players will find their playing time reduced by these new rules. We can all name English players who have sat
on the bench at big clubs when they could have been playing at smaller clubs. (Ryan
Bertrand) The new rules will encourage
more of that.
These consequences of the new rules are not well
understood. Consider this article. Allegedly, Southampton FC “are superbly
placed to cope with the strict work permit rules being brought in by the
FA—because of the thriving nature of their academy.” This simply makes no sense.
Right now, Southampton has, by my count, nine players who
require work permits to play in England:
Ramirez, Gazzaniga, Yoshida, Tadic, Wanyama, Djuricic, Mane, Cropper,
and Mayuka. It is not clear how many of
these players would have been able to obtain their work permits under the newly
implemented work permit rules. A few
might qualify automatically because of the exception for players for whom the
transfer fee is ten million pounds.
Setting aside the special exception for expensive players, only Dusan
Tadic appears likely to have been eligible for a work permit at the time of his
original transfer to Southampton. The
other players did not have enough playing time for their National team or their
National team was not high enough rated to qualify under the new rules.
It is not clear how our academy would help us solve the
problems created by the new rules. We
will be unable to sign as many foreign players and our best English players
will be snapped up by the richer clubs.
A more sensible article would have reported that Chelsea, Manchester
United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and, maybe, Tottenham were
superbly placed to deal with the new rules because virtually all of their transfers
are for big enough fees that the new work permit rules would not block their
transfers and they have the money to buy up young English players. In other words the new rules are designed to
favor the richer clubs at the expense of the rest of the League. (Make no mistake, Southampton is better
positioned than many other clubs to pay high enough transfer fees to avoid work
permit rule limitations. We are also
better positioned to develop at least some of our own players and to steal
young English players away from other clubs.)
It seems likely that Southampton management agrees with me since
Southampton was the only Premier League club to openly question Dyke about his
proposed rules. (See here and here.)
Dyke has stated that the rules would not be forced upon the
Premier League but would, instead, be implemented in consultation with the
Premier League, but Michel Platini appears to back his plan, so perhaps UEFA
will adopt the rules for everyone. (See here.) This would actually be a better
solution for the Premier League because, if these rules applied to all nations,
English clubs would not be uniquely disadvantaged in European competition.
On the other hand, if EUFA adopts these rules it will
greatly disadvantage the smaller nations in international competition.
Under the new rules, it will be much more difficult for the best
players from smaller countries to get onto clubs in the better leagues because there will be
fewer rosters spots for non-home grown players.
At the same time, the clubs in those small country leagues will be more
reluctant to sell their home grown players because they will have more home grown
roster spots to fill. The demand for their players will be reduced as well. Thus, the new
rules will not only unfairly favor the richer clubs in the Premier League (and
other Leagues as well) but they will favor the nations who have the better
domestic leagues at the expense of the smaller nations. If the smaller nations have any sense, they
will vote down the new rules when UEFA tries to enact them.
In support of the proposed rules, it has been claimed that the
rosters of eleven Premier League clubs currently comply with the new rules. However, most of those clubs are in the
bottom half of the league and qualify primarily because they are unable to
afford very many foreign players and, instead, include English players on their
rosters who are not good enough for the better Premier League clubs. It is hardly an endorsement of the rules that
weaker clubs can comply with them without difficulty. No doubt every club in the Conference also is
in current compliance with these rules.
The English national team will be improved if more
potentially elite English players in their late teens and early twenties could
get playing time in the Premier League.
These rules will not cause that to happen. Under current rules, under 21 players can already
play without filling roster slots. Yet,
they are not getting very much playing time, especially from the biggest
clubs. These rules will not force the
bigger clubs to play young English players.
Unless the FA and the Premier League are willing to introduce rules that
not only force English players onto Premier League rosters but also force them
into the games, the rules will not have any significant benefit to the English
National Team but will reduce competitive balance in the Premier League and
reduce the competitiveness of English clubs in European football. Dyke should withdraw these proposals and come
up with something more practical and less destructive. Possibly, the focus should be on improving
youth coaching in English football and the development of young players. If the young English players of the future
are better coached and become better players at a young age, their path into
the first team of Premier League clubs will open naturally at least until they
are bought and benched by the richer clubs.
Having determined that I think the current proposals are a
very bad idea, I thought I should offer my suggestions to improve them. Obviously, my first choice is simply to leave
things as they are. If that is not
possible, I think that the proposals could be vastly improved simply by getting
rid of the two roster places for club trained players. If those roster places are eliminated, it
removes the incentive for the richer clubs to try and gather up as many high
quality 15 year-old players as possible.
In fact, the richer clubs will have no need to gather such players and
would, instead, probably let them develop their skills at other clubs and buy
them up in their early 20s when they can fill up their homegrown slots. This would mitigate one of the effects of the
rules that would probably be most harmful to the development of young
players. In effect, it would leave the
situation where it is now where richer clubs buy young players, but they generally
wait to make sure the young players are good enough.
I also do not believe that there is any need to increase the
number of home grown players from eight to twelve. If the problem that is being addressed is the
“alarming” tendency for these home grown players to not be English because they
can achieve home grown status at age 21,
it would be enough to enact the changes to the rules that require home grown
status to be determined by age 18. With
such changes, players like Fabregas, Scheiderlin, Rafael, and Krul would no
longer count as home grown players. They
would have to be fit into the roster as foreign players and their spots would be
available to English players.
There is also something to be said for making changes one at
a time and seeing what happens. The
changes in the academy systems are less than four years old. The new work permits rule has just been
implemented. That rule will reduce the
number of non- elite, non- EU foreign players in English football. It will virtually eliminate non-EU players
from the lower leagues. This rule change
might make a significant difference. Why
not wait a few years to see what happens before making any other changes?
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