UEFA\'s Homegrown Players Initiative

This thread discusses the Content article: [url=http://www.thefreekick.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&Itemid=66&id=49]UEFA’s Homegrown Players Initiative

I’d been wondering about this rule for ages but it seems it has been adopted by UEFA and unsurprisingly it has caused problems for Chelsea.

Every squad in the Champions League last week submitted 25 players to participate in the competition, every squad except Chelsea that is. Chelsea submitted 23 names to UEFA, and most of the attention was focussed on the absence of Ballack from that list.

The interesting story is why Ballack was ommitted. As the article above explains the new rules of UEFA stipulate that every squad must have 3 players trained by the national association the club is affiliated to (England in this case) and a further 3 players trained at the club themselves.

Chelsea didn’t have many problems fullfilling the first part with Sidwell, Lampard, Cole, Bridge etc. all part of that group. However when it came to registering players who had trained with Chelsea themselves they could only offer John Terry. So they had to leave two empty spots in their squad for the Champions League and as Ballack is not expected to play until November he missed out.

Had they held onto Glen Johnson or a youth keeper or someone they could have found room for Ballack but they didn’t bother.

It’s not much of a punishment for them but it’s certainly a step in the right direction from UEFA. Imagine only being able to field one player who came through your own academy in a squad of 25.

Don’t think Glen Johnson counts. He came through at West Ham.

He had 3 years at Chelsea though which is all you need once they bought him young enough. He counted alright but that guy Scott Sinclair that they bought doesn’t because he’s had 3 years at Bristol Rovers but nothing at Chelsea so he got left out too.

That’s absolutely pathetic from Chelsea.

Some countries are excellent at developing young players (Netherlands, Portugal, France) and others are not. There’s a big debate in England this week about the future of youth academies and Trevor Brooking, now FA Technical Director, says he fears the time might come when England aren’t challenging to win major tournaments but are merely happy to qualify for them. Ahem.

But with the vast riches available to English clubs, primarily from TV revenue, teams like Chelsea can afford to buy any player at any price. Why spend hour after hour scouting young school players, signing them, training and developing them when they might not even eventually make the grade when you have the resources to go out and spend 30m on a proven player?

Clubs like Chelsea have no soul and I don’t understand how their supporters can retain any affinity with what their club has morphed in to. In fairness not all of the biggest English clubs are like Chelsea with Manchester United and Liverpool having a history of bringing through homegrown players.

Arsenal interest me though. One of my best friends supports them and is always lamenting the buying power of the other top 3 English teams. He can be quite withering in his criticism of Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool when they spend big bucks on players and will always mention how Wenger brings players up and turns them into class acts on a much smaller budget.

However, I think in many respects they’re the worst of the 4 clubs. At least when Chelsea buy a player, they pay the going rate and the selling club generally gets properly compensated for the player they’ve developed, e.g. Manchester City getting 20m for Wright-Phillips, 6m going to Southampton for Bridge etc.

Arsenal though are fairly opportunistic in that they can’t really afford to splash out 20m on a player so they swarm around younger players who haven’t even progressed to their club’s first team. Then they’ll sign them by paying a nominal fee or, in some cases, for free because the player isn’t old enough to have signed professional forms already.

So you have instances where a team like Servette or somebody has trained up Phillippe Senderos from the age of 9 or 10 and then Arsenal come in when he’s 16 and swipe him away from them, even before Servette have had a chance to see a player they’ve nurtured for years play in their first team. They’ve done it throughout Wenger’s time there going back to Anelka and continuing right through to Fabregas and they have the system down to a tee. Even now they have a young Mexican striker on their books. He wouldn’t have got a permit under UK labour laws so he’s been on loan in Spain for the last couple of years where he’ll stay until he satisfies a residency requirement over there that will allow him to claim an EU passport and so join up with Arsenal!

Latterly other clubs have seen the potential cost savings to be made from this course of action if you’re fairly satisfied that the 16/17 year old you’ve identified is the real deal. Manchester United haven’t been as successful as Arsenal though with the likes of Pique and Rossi. Benitez signed a raft of youngsters from Hungary, Bulgaria and the likes in the summer while Chelsea’s youth set up is a joke and they don’t really have anyone other than a young Israeli striker, Ben Sahar, who’s out on loan somewhere.

As the rules allow it then it’s fair game but I suppose what I reject is the insinuation that Arsenal are somehow the ‘poor boys fighting the honest fight’. They’ve exactly the same morals as a Chelsea, just not the depth of financial backing.

I’m a bit worried that Michel Platini, who seems to be a bit of a fruit loop, is agreeing with my above post from a while back regarding Arsenal. I retain the opinion that Arsenal are cynical leeches and everyone getting wet and slipping off their seats watching them is wrong and I’m right. And all the praise Liam Brady’s starting to get for ‘bringing through’ these players (which is being used by some commentators as reason for him getting the Ireland job) is not washing with me either. Poaching Fabregas from Barca when he’s 16 and throwing him into the first team at 17 does not Liam Brady a coaching genius make. Certain footballers will have the quality to go into first teams at the age of 17 and 18. Arsenal merely have built up a scouting system to identify and poach them. The actual players they bring through themselves (Justin Hoyte anybody?) are nowhere near as good as those they buy. So it’s far from a club where they chisel out superstars - they generally buy/steal ready-made superstar kids.

From the BBC:

Platini critical of Wenger policy

Uefa president Michel Platini has criticised Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger and other clubs who buy players at a young age.

Wenger is famous for investing in burgeoning talent and developing youngsters into major stars.

But Platini is not a fan of his fellow Frenchman’s strategy and said: "I do not like the system of Arsene Wenger.

“In France, Italy and Spain it is easy to buy with money the best players at 14, 15 or 16. I don’t like that.”

He added: "If the best clubs buy the best 15 or 16 players that is finished for all the clubs in Europe.

“If my son is playing at Millwall and at 16 Manchester come in for this player then when will Millwall have a good team?”

Platini is keen for countries to give one of their Champions League qualifying positions to the winners of the domestic cup competition and Uefa will hold a meeting on 12 November to discuss the proposal, among other options.

"The leagues are not so in favour of this proposal but the clubs and the national associations are more in favour of this.

“But I am very open to everybody and what is good for football, not for me and my ideas but for football.”

Certainly against the cup winners CL position but I do agree with him on the Arsenal point. Not sure what can be done about it though.

Also I think Brady’s role with Arsenal may be overstated in the Irish media. I doubt he watched Fabregas or identified him as a signing.

I’d be for a change in the Champions league qualifying to award a spot to Cup winners. So What if some shit teams made the champions league. So what if Liverpool(jugs), Chelski, Arsenal or, God forbid, Man Utd didn’t qualify one year. This would restore the romance of cup competitions a bit.

Alright for England where there’s 4 spots - what about Scotland? It will only serve to further devalue Scotland’s ranking in Europe making it even harder for the smaller clubs to survive - they depend on a buoyant Celtic and Rangers.

Just thinking about this a bit more, I’m not a big supporter of the way Arsenal systematically take young players from other clubs. But what annoys me far more is the attitude that’s prevalent in the media, especially on Sky, as they salivate over the Arsenal youngsters. You have the likes of Richard Keys and Andy Gray with wide-eyed, incredulous grins expressing their amazement at how Arsenal continue to ‘develop’ and ‘produce’ such brilliant young players after watching them dismantle Everton or someone else’s first team in the League Cup. Almost suggesting that they deserve immense credit for all the work they do to produce these players. It’s not really that incredible if you stalk the best 17 year-olds in the world and then poach them from the clubs that moulded them. It’s more being opportunistic and cunning.

This just seems ridiculous:

Man Utd capture 14-year-old Cofie

Manchester United have beaten Liverpool and Chelsea in the race for 14-year-old Burnley striker John Cofie and agreed an undisclosed fee with the Clarets.

Burnley rejected a reported 250,000 bid from Liverpool for Cofie this week.

But the German-born Ghanaian refused to return to training with the Clarets and they agreed he could leave Turf Moor.

Burnley have inserted a 25% sell-on clause in the deal, which also gives them first refusal on any loan deal and a future friendly match with United.

It will be three years before Cofie can sign professional terms at Old Trafford and the friendly game will take place within 12 months of that.

Cofie was signed by the Clarets last summer after he was spotted at a youth tournament in Germany.

“The player was unwilling to come back to Burnley so we didn’t have a choice in keeping him here,” Burnley operational director Brendan Flood told his club’s website.

"He was going to go to one of the clubs chasing his signature and in the end, we all felt that Manchester United was the right option.

“He has a good future ahead of him and hopefully we can try and keep youngsters of John’s quality at the club in future.”

I think the EPL have really pissed off the FA with their international match proposal. The FA are now thinking about implementing FIFA’s proposed quota system despite the EPL objections.

FA changes tune on Fifa quota

Matt Scott
Wednesday February 20, 2008
The Guardian

David Triesman’s heavy hint yesterday that the Football Association is ready to support Fifa’s demand for a radical quota system for overseas players was a distinct departure from Soho Square’s previous policy.

Lord Triesman, the FA chairman, has spoken of the need to build bridges with the world governing body after the Premier League’s outlandish “international-round” proposal. However, no one could have predicted that he would support a 6+5 system, whereby six players in every Premier and Football League club would have to be English.

The Premier League’s opposition to the policy - due to be put to a vote at the Fifa congress in Sydney in May - was reiterated at a parliamentary select committee yesterday. But Triesman said: “We need a very careful analysis of what may be the regulations about how many start in games.”
The comment distances FA policy under Triesman from the position in its mid-January response to the committee’s consultation, a few days before his appointment, when its official submission stated: “The FA does not agree with the concept for a quota for ‘home-grown’ players.”

Although English clubs may be dismayed by the about-turn, it can do the FA’s World Cup bid no harm.

Scudamore on a mission

Richard Scudamore, the Premier League’s chief executive, will visit the FA’s headquarters today to talk up the merits of his 39th-game proposal. He will meet Lord Triesman and his FA counterpart, Brian Barwick, hoping to persuade them that through his organisation’s “distribution mechanisms” the English game at every level can benefit financially from the international exposure of what he has termed the top flight’s “global expansion”. The FA executives will then open up the idea for discussion by the main board tomorrow.

Agents off the agenda

The members of parliament at yesterday’s department for culture, media and sport select committee were certainly capable of grandstanding about the international round. But the one area of discussion that would most have served football, rather than self-referential talk about the women’s game from Helen Southworth MP would have been about agents. Lack of Fifa oversight of the transfer market has led to numerous abuses, with the Premier League’s Quest inquiry uncovering more than a dozen irregular deals in a 25-month period. The European Commission’s White Paper on Sport - the intended focus of yesterday’s debate - has the EC undertaking to conduct an “impact assessment” of agents which might lead to a pan-European regulatory body. But not one MP asked a question on the agents issue yesterday.

16 the number for now

The recent rebuke for the Euro 2012 hosts Poland and Ukraine has delayed discussion about a possible expansion of the tournament to 20 or 24 teams. The subject had been due for debate at the Uefa executive committee meeting in Zagreb last month but fears over progress on construction of stadiums and infrastructure dominated the day. Uefa is aware that the expansion - a pet project of the president, Michel Platini, below - will require much more logistical preparation than the four-groups-of-four format of the current 16-team competition. The executive committee prefers for now to concentrate on getting Euro 2012 back on track, and expects to see genuine progress on stadiums, roads and railways by mid-summer this year. If nothing is in place by January 2009, discussions about whether to seek an alternative host will begin in earnest.