The Unacceptable 6+5 Rule

Sepp Blatter comes up with another revolutionary rule that could change the outlook of club football. What remains to be seen is whether it will be a positive change or a negative one. Blatter is pressing on with his plans for a quota to be imposed on foreign players, even though the European Union, which governs the part of the world where restrictions will have most impact, has unequivocally declared them illegal.

Taking England as an example, Blatter believes, or tries to make the footballing world believe that the inflow of foreign players in England has caused the downfall of English players and ultimately cost them a Euro spot. His view of things will be accepted by home town fans only who would like to see more home grown talent in the team, and maybe Mclaren will support him by stating that's the reason why England failed. On the contrary, I believe playing with the best players will only have sharpened the skills of English players.

Fifa has voted in favor of the implementation of this rule. Uefa's plan to beat the EU regulations is subtly different. Their definition of a homegrown player is someone of any age or nationality who has trained at a club for three years between the ages of 15 and 21. But Blatter hopes to duck under EU employment legislation by insisting that clubs will still have the right to own as many foreign players as they like, as long as only five of them are on the field when the match kicks off.

My personal view is that this rule would not do any good to football in general. Firstly the rule says six home players should start the match. So the 6+5 might turn into a 8+3 after all the substitutions are made and match would end with 8 foreign players. So this changes nothing except that we may see a lot more substitutions even before halftime. And this rule would in no way improve the standards. It will surely decrease the standard of football played in the national leagues around the world.

EPL will be the league most hardly hit by the new law because of the number of foreigners in it. But, with spending power on such a scale, England's top clubs will not be at all constrained by limitations on foreigners. The big clubs will make sure they have the best foreigners, and also buy all the local talent available. So what eventually would happen is that smaller teams will have to accommodate too many sub-standard English players thereby reducing the quality of play, and in turn the attractiveness of football in EPL. So the gap between the rich and the poor will further widen, and this surely won't be what Blatter and Platini hopes for. Or is this what they want?