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Fifa president Sepp Blatter is ready to challenge the European Union to get a quota for foreign players within European teams. He wants clubs to be limited to five foreigners in their starting eleven to allow homegrown talent to flourish. Within the UK, players from other 'home countries' would count as foreigners given that there are separate football associations and national teams. The 71-year old Swiss argues that football deserves special treatment because it is not like any other job. 'Workers in Europe can circulate freely but footballers are not workers,' he said. 'You cannot consider a footballer like any normal worker because they need 11 to play a match'. The logic of this is difficult to follow as there are many tasks that require team work. He also claimed that footballers 'are more artists than workers'. It would be interesting to get a response from a sculptor or ballerina to that suggestion.
Nevertheless, there is clearly support among fans for the move. When asked if there should be a quota of foreign players per club in the Premiership, 56 per cent of the 1055 people surveyed by Football Focus said they were in favour. In its recent white paper on sport the EU has recently unveiled plans to impose more regulations on football and says the sport should only have limited immunity from rules governing employment. The legal position is far from clear and may need to be tested in the courts. In an interesting dissertation, law postgraduate Duncan McHardy has argued, 'So long as UEFA's "locally trained" quota falls within the boundary of what is appropriate, proportional and necessary for attaining the objectives it will be permissble.' Lawyer Jean-Christian Drolet commented on the Sports and EU mailing list, 'They have to argue that the homegrown rule will help competitive balance and the training and development of young players and wait for a court challenge. Holding that line may be give them a chance'. However, he was not impressed by the tactics of Sepp Blatter. Certainly, as McHardy notes, 'the decision in Bosman did not provide an outright ban on measures to regulate team composition.'
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