Stephen Hornsby, partner of London law firm Davenport Lyons specialising in contentious rights & dispute resolution, regards the English Football League’s new regulations on home-grown players as problematic despite its good intentions.
Just because a new sporting regulation is announced as being the first in Europe, does not mean to say that it is a good one. The “home grown” rule, triumphantly announced by the Football League, may well be a case in point. The rule (which requires at least four players in every 16 man match day squad to have been registered for at least 3 years before their 21st birthday) is designed to encourage clubs to invest in academies and not buy-in players from those who do invest in such training schemes. More speculatively, the measure is designed to “do something” for the national team by allowing more nationally qualified players to play at a level which puts them in the shop window for the Premier League.
Despite these noble objectives, it is seriously open to question whether even the first of these will be realised. As a result of an agreement with the European Commission, no transfer fee or compensation can be paid for a player who is out of contract after the age of 23. There is therefore no particular reward for those clubs who bother with academies at a time when the recession will be threatening their very existence. Also, the problem with that rule is that it is not club specific; in other words, as long as a player develops within the national system (rather than within one club) clubs can acquire the rather low number of players required from other clubs in England, to meet their quota.
Other market responses to the “home grown” rule are perhaps worse. Clubs could be encouraged to bring in even more minors from other countries to build up their squad as the players would become “home grown” after three years. This process (which has been the subject of Platini’s wrath) is perfectly acceptable within the European Community and the European Economic Area if a player based there is over 16. It is also acceptable wherever a player is based under the age of 18 if his parents move here for non-footballing reasons. Again, this freedom of movement for younger players is part of an agreement with the European Commission.
Recently, FIFA has announced that it is tightening up this latter rule to stop clubs offering jobs to parents as a way of bringing in minors. It hopes to make approval of such transfers subject to the decision of a committee. It is not clear whether the measure will have any impact whatsoever on intra-EU movements of players over the age of 16. In any event, European Commission approval is necessary. However, given the amount of economic immigration from the former colonies of European countries, it is far from clear that even if the European Commission approves the worldwide restrictions that are mooted, clubs can be stopped from raiding academies in other European countries. So the regulation probably will not work without a ban on intra-EU movement, which the European Commission would surely never accept.
As far as helping the national team is concerned, there is clearly a difficulty as “home grown” players (as Fabregas would be classed) are not necessarily qualified for the national teams of leagues where they ply their trade. Nor is a nationally qualified player (e.g. Manchester United’s Owen Hargreaves who came through German team Bayern Munich’s youth system) necessarily “home grown”. The measure is therefore merely neutral as far as the goal of assisting the national team is concerned.
Looked at purely as a piece of regulation, the “home grown” rule is unlikely to be fit for its purpose even if everyone adopted it. Indeed, so long as football is a market place in which serious revenue sharing is a non-starter and promotion and relegation is a sacred cow, the short term fix of buying in players rather than growing them will continue to be irresistible.
