In a week of international action which has seen Roy Hodgson call up Andros Townsend and receive widespread criticism for doing so, while Dominic Solanke is making up the numbers with the first team (though only because he had just won England’s young player of the year award), it is a more poignant time than ever for the FA’s Greg Dyke to announce new attempts to increase the volume of English players seeing action at the top of the game. Having called the numbers of English players featuring in the Champions League “pathetic”, he clearly feels the need for improvement, though questions will rightly be raised as to whether the proposed plans will have the desired effect.
The change in the ruling will make it a requirement that each club name 12 ‘home-grown’ players in their squad (up from 8), with the requirements to be considered ‘home-grown’ changing from being with a club from the age of 18 to 15. Additionally, 2 home-grown players must be ‘club-trained’ and it will be made even more difficult for non-EU players to gain the necessary paperwork to play in England.
On first glance there doesn’t look to be much wrong with the proposals. Aside from the glaring fact that it further isolates and slims the chances of the many talented players from poorer non-EU countries realising their dream of playing in the Premier League, it does indeed look like the result will be more playing time for young English players, with the hope that that will directly impact on the volume and quality of players available to the national team. The logic behind these decisions is all too simplistic, though.
There is indeed a need for English players to gain more game time and thus greater experience, as at present they are simply given significantly less than others. English players account for just 35.1% of the minutes played in the Premier League this season, compared to 57.6% by Spanish players in La Liga, 55.8% by French players in Ligue 1, 48.0% by Germans in the Bundesliga and 43.1%by Italians in Serie A. They are also behind the Russian, Dutch and Turkish leagues.
Similarly, when it comes to goals scored in each league, England lag behind, with 33.7% of Premier League goals this season netted by Englishmen. Compare this to 49.6% in France, 42.1% in Germany, 41.8% in Spain (in spite of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo dominating the scoring charts) and 38.2% in Italy, and the problems are yet more pronounced. Foreign players are undoubtedly improving the standard of the Premier League, and without that added quality, there would have been no record-breaking television deal last month. The money did little to dissuade those who maintain that the English top tier is not in fact ‘the best league in the world’, while recent results in European competition certainly settled any remaining debate.
And the fact that the new ruling will make English (home-grown) players even more valuable (to English clubs), and that means that even fewer will take the plunge and go abroad. The only English players currently plying their trade abroad in any of Europe’s top 5 leagues are Ashley Cole and Micah Richards, who have just 15 league starts between them since moving to Roma and Fiorentina, while Josh McEachran is the only other in any of the aforementioned leagues (playing on loan at Vitesse). They won’t be joined by many others after the new rules come in.