World Soccer: Six plus Five

Excerpt from the Bosman ruling:

"15. Article 48 of the Treaty precludes the application of rules laid down by sporting associations under which, in matches in competitions which they organize, football clubs may field only a limited number of professional players who are nationals of other Member States.

Such rules are contrary to the principle of the prohibition of discrimination based on nationality as regards employment, remuneration and conditions of work and employment and it is of no relevance that they concern not the employment of such players, on which there is no restriction, but the extent to which their clubs may field them in official matches, since, in so far as participation in such matches is the essential purpose of a professional player's activity, a rule which restricts that participation obviously also restricts the chances of employment of the player concerned.

Nor can those rules, which do not concern specific matches between teams representing their countries but apply to all official matches between clubs, be justified for reasons which are not of an economic nature and are of sporting interest only, such as: preserving the traditional link between each club and its country, since a football club's links with the Member State in which it is established cannot be regarded as inherent in its sporting activity; creating a sufficient pool of national players to provide the national teams with top players to field in all team positions, since, whilst national teams must be made up of players having the nationality of the relevant country, those players need not necessarily be registered to play for clubs in that country; or maintaining a competitive balance between clubs, since there are no rules limiting the possibility for richer clubs to recruit the best national players, thus undermining that balance to just the same extent".

The fact that this ruling is so startlingly clear does make me wonder what on earth Sepp Blatter thinks he's doing (or since he's a cunning old bugger what it is he's really up to).

The solution is UEFA's homegrown player rule - but with restrictions on squad sizes at all levels and particularly controls on the number of "foreign" players at youth level.

The EU have already said they are "OK" with UEFA's rules at the moment. The key question is how far this could be pushed at youth level. For example would it be OK to say that a certain percentage of U18 players (lets say 80%) had to have been trained within the national association of the club concerned from the age of 15? Given that no international transfers are allowed prior to age 16 (even within the EU) this might also be deemed as "discrimination" but then it's not about nationality (a French kid living in London at 14 could still play for Arsenal etc as a "homegrown player").

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