The baclklash against the Premier League is one part of the blame game for England’s early exit from the World Cup. Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington is the latest person to pitch in and suggest that the number of foreign players in the Premiership holds back the development of foreign players.
The baclklash against the Premier League is one part of the blame game for England’s early exit from the World Cup. Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington is the latest person to pitch in and suggest that the number of foreign players in the Premiership holds back the development of foreign players.
It is possible to control the influx of players from outside the European Union (or, more strictly, the EU plus the European Economic Area which covers countries like Iceland) through the use of work permits. Indeed, the conditions for these are being more stringengtly enforced as part of the broader immigration debate.
But just as you can’t ‘cap’ migration from elsewhere in the EU, you can’t cap the number of players from outside the UK in a squad. Freedom of movement of labour within the EU is a fundamental principle of the Eurioean treaties and any attempt to impede it would be open to challenge in the European Court of Justice which has not been slow to intervene on football matters in the past (remember Bosman). It is true that the Lisbon Treaty does contain a clause about the ‘special character’ of sport and one could have an interesting legal argument about what that means in practice, but I doubt that it overrules the fundamental right of freedom of movement.
For many years now it has been suggested that the Premiership ‘bubble is about to burst’. It hasn’t happened yet, but the current ecoomic climate is more challenging, even though football has proved resilient to recession. Manchester City are still making expensive transfers. However, there are some storm clubs on the horizon and a very full and balanced analysis of the situtaion can be found here.