Blaming foreigners

Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe has entered the toughest competition in Britain; he's trying to become our most risible politician. He wants an inquiry into whether foreign players are to blame why the England team is doing so badly.
They are indeed to blame - they are better than us. And there is a link between the uselessness of English footballers and the dominance of foreigners in the Premiership. There are many foreign players in the Premiership because English footballers aren't good enough - not vice versa.
But there's a question here that's not being asked: why is there so much fuss about the number of foreign players now? Why wasn't there a fuss two or three years ago, when their numbers were almost as great?
There are two reasons:
1. 2-3 years ago, people thought England were a good team, and their failure to get beyond the quarter-final of the 2002 World Cup or Euro 2004 was due to bad luck or bad management. Today, this illusion is shattered. Everyone knows the England team are bad, and they're looking for someone to blame. And it's an old and universal fact that foreigners can be blamed for everything.
2. Arsenal are a better team now. And their rivals, having no hope of playing better football, want to drag them down. Let's look at who's calling for a quota on foreigners.

Asked if he was in favour of the quota system, Gerrard said: “Yes, definitely, I am all for there being a rule change. “Something has got to happen otherwise there will be more and more foreigners and they will take over." 

This is the same Stevie G who got outplayed by Cesc Fabregas last month, and who knows that Liverpool are obviously inferior to Arsenal.

Reading manager Steve Coppell says quotas on English players in Premier League teams are necessary in order to improve the national side.

He said this the day after Reading got played off the pitch by guess who.

"It's certainly not wrong that clubs should be seen to have a proportion of home-based players," said Ferguson, who is proud that his team is based equally on British and foreign players..."You want to protect your own."

Old Red Nose is certainly protecting his own. You'd never guess who are Manyoo's closest challengers for the title.
So, let's face it. Calls to limit foreign players are not only illiberal and illogical, but they are based on the most blatant narrow self-interest. The magnificent Daily Mash got it right:

Sir Alex Ferguson has demanded a cap on the number of matches Arsenal is allowed to win during a Premier League season.
The Manchester United manager said Arsenal wins were undermining the domestic game and preventing other teams from winning trophies as often as they would like to.

Comments

[Mike]

Oh, what a load of nonsense.

Foreign players crowd-out young and developing English players who require first team experience to progress to the next level.

Swamping the Premiership with Africans and Brazilians is going to atrophy young Welsh, English, and Scottish talent.

You need to achieve a sensible balance between homegrown and foreign-born players.

[Luis Enrique]

"They are indeed to blame - they are better than us."

superb

[Igor Belanov]

Yes, it is rubbish.

The main reason for so many foreign players is the sheer amount of money washing round the Premier League, and it's highly unequal spread. Clubs amass huge squads with expensive star players and where Englishmen are frequently mere squad or fill-in players. Other clubs at the bottom, perennial relegation candidates or newly promoted sides, are extremely short-term and buy up experienced second-class foreigners as opposed to encouraging local talent. Many young Englishmen are poached by big clubs only to languish in the reserves or on the bench, such as Walcott and Wright-Phillips.

And there must be loads of Hertfordshire lads with talent who would love to play for Arsenal.

[Bob B]

Isn't all this more a case of "lucrative British jobs for indigenous British players," as Gordon Brown might have put it?

"The average Premiership footballer earns a basic salary of £676,000, according to a survey published today. The survey, conducted by The Independent in conjunction with players' union PFA, puts the average top flight player on £13,000 a week - but that figure rises by anything between 60 and 100% when bonuses are factored in."
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1751542,00.html

[chris]

Mike - come off it. If there were loads of talented young English players being kept out of Premiership teams by foreigners, the excess supply of young English players would lead to low prices, and they'd be snapped up by ambitious clubs. But this is not the case. First, any decent English player commands huge transfer fees (£16.5m for Darren Bent), suggesting English talent is scarce. Second, there are few if any lower league clubs who are doing really well and playing good football by using only promising English youngsters.

[cityunslicker]

Quite right. A successful business has been built up in the private market and now the government et al want to get in a start fiddling.

The only solution is to train english kids to be as good as their foreign counterparts from a young age. oddly enough the FA scrapped the plan for its national training scheme in Burton.

This is a classic example of people targeting the sypmtoms rather than causes...

[dearieme]

The huge outflow of talented English teenagers to Italy and Spain suggests that English clubs are short-sighted? Maybe not.

[Igor Belanov]

Oh, and the English national team isn't that bad. Remember, they have won their last 3 home competitive matches 3-0, and two of the teams they beat were Russia and Israel, not exactly minnows. No country has a divine right to be in every international finals, and England still have a chance.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Totally agreed.

[Bruce]

Yet because English players are already priced at a premium the English team is probably one of the most expensive in the world. I assume this is largely marketing: a Beckman will have more financial value than an ugly one-legged Lithuania player, even if they are of the same footballing standard. Which has given me a thought: do the better looking players demand higher transfer payments/salary?

[f]

"Oh, and the English national team isn't that bad."

Quite right. For a medium-sized country to get to the 1/4 finals of the last three major tournaments in a sport which nigh on every country in the world now plays seriously is a damn good record.

All this quota stuff is wrong, and dangerous.

[Jose]

I am afraid your Sports Minister has given a lousy (but politically wonderful) idea to politicians in search of headlines in other countries. I am sure someone here will pick it up eventually.

Blogger from Mexico

[Mike Woodhouse]

I agree with the loadsamoney proposition - when the English Premier League is the richest in the world then it's going to be a magnet for the best players. And the pressure to deliver will maintain the practice of buying rather than building.

But English players will continue to be developed, it's just that many more will start in the Football League and the best of them will be sucked into the money vortex as they prove themselves worthwhile.

I'd suggest that the second tier of English players (or those who are later developers) will need to be prepared to move abroad to get themselves into the shop window. There's no reason within Europe why they shouldn't - mobility applies in both directions, after all.

[Igor Belanov]

I suppose you have to recognise that Britain has an extraordinarily large amount of professional football clubs, reaching well into non-league football these days. So there's still plenty of employment for English footballers, just not always at the top level.

One of the problems is the media, again! They hype up the Premier League and the performances of its top clubs in Europe, but at the same time are overly critical of the English national team and expect wonders. A similar effect exists in cricket. If England lose a series then it's overseas and Kolpak players to blame. When England won the 2005 Ashes all these factors were totally forgotten.

[Ken Houghton]

We'll take your castoffs and let them train here for good money (if a rather dodgy FX exposure).

Just send us more like Landon Donovan and less like that Roberto Carlos knockoff with the idiot wife.

[dave heasman]

" Which has given me a thought: do the better looking players demand higher transfer payments/salary? "

Yes. And they get it. Fabregas isn't hugely beter than Scholes, in fact they're quite similar aren't they, but he's cute. More dosh to Cesc.

The other question is - why don't Premier League teams have English kids in their acadamies? That's where the problem really lives.