Fifa backs '6+5' rule to restrict foreign influence

THE annual congress of Fifa, world football's governing body, gave its overwhelming support yesterday to a resolution which could bring about the biggest change in the sport since the Bosman ruling.

The '6+5' rule, which would restrict clubs to five foreigners in their starting line-ups for domestic league games, was passed with 155 votes in favour and only five against.

Despite the near-unanimity of delegates at the congress in Sydney, 6+5 has a long way to go before it is on football's statute book.

It is being championed by Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who hopes it will be in place by the start of season 2012-13, but officials of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, have said it contravenes EU law.

The aim of the resolution, according to Blatter, is to make leagues more competitive and less predictable. He believes that in those countries where some clubs are rich enough to recruit the cream of world football, notably England, the less well-off teams have no real chance of challenging for the championship.

"There is a growing sporting and economic inequality, especially among clubs," Blatter told the congress. "There is a decrease of competitiveness. Many clubs do not play to be champions, but to finish fourth, fifth, sixth or even not to be relegated. "Something is wrong here. This does not match with the philosophy of our game. We need to try to correct this.

"As (Newcastle manager] Kevin Keegan recently said: 'I can only start my season to fight to be fifth or sixth or seventh. It is impossible for me to go into the final four'.

"At the end of the Champions League in Europe you have in the quarter-finals four teams of the same association; in the semi-finals three of these teams.

"Then in the final you are surprised that you have two teams of the same association? We want to bring some remedies and this is the six-plus-five rule's objective."

After the vote, Blatter appeared unconcerned by the supposed illegality within the EU of the resolution, and suggested there was room for movement on both sides. "The Fifa president has asked, together with the Uefa president, to explore – and explore is not to discuss, it's to go in depth – within the limits of the law," he said.

"We are not far away from a situation. Speaking about it is illegal? For whom? For when? If there is a law, a law can be amended.

"I have already now a meeting with the speaker of the European parliament – chairman as we say, but you say in the British version, the speaker – on 5 June in the afternoon in Brussels, as he said, to explore now the ways.

"If he says to explore the ways, it's not to say 'stop it'. So you see we're on the right track."

The Scottish Football Association was among the national governing bodies to support the resolution, although Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, was not wholehearted in his support. "I wouldn't say we welcome it wholly, but we see it would help the national team," Smith said. "I would hope clubs see it's a rule for the betterment of the game in general."

EU officials, however, believe the proposed restrictions go too far, and believe that UEFA's alternative 'homegrown players' proposal would have the positive effects desired by Blatter while remaining within the law. "The European Commission is showing a red card to the 6+5 rule," said the ECommissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Vladimir Spidla.

"This would be direct discrimination on the basis of nationality, which is unacceptable. It's a non-starter.

"Professional football players are workers, therefore the principle of non-discrimination and the right to free movement apply to them. If EU member states allowed the application of the 6+5 rule they would be in breach of EU law and players who are discriminated against could take the member states to court. And they would win."

Uefa's alternative plan defines home-grown players as team members who, regardless of age or nationality, have been trained by their club or by another club in the same national association for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21. "Compared with the intentions announced by Fifa to impose the 6+5 rule, which is directly discriminatory and therefore incompatible with the EU law, the home-grown players rule proposed by UEFA seems to me to be proportionate and to comply with the principle of free movement of workers," Spidla added.

The English FA also voted in favour of Blatter's resolution, but a spokesman said they were "in favour of further exploration" rather than 100 per cent behind the plan. "Bringing through more high-quality English players in the future is an absolute priority for the FA," he said.

"One of our reservations has always been that the 6+5 rule appears to contravene European law and we welcome further exploration of its legality. However, this is a question of balance and we believe first and foremost in a meritocracy system, where players appear in club teams based on performance and ability."

In another move which unlike 6+5 comes into effect immediately, the congress approved all the proposals on international eligibility. This included a change in the length of time an uncapped player needs to live in a country to qualify on residential grounds.

Whereas the previous qualifying period was two years, it is now five. The relevant article of Fifa's "Regulations Governing the Applications of the Statutes" now says a player is eligible provided "he has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant association".

Fifa president's hopes will soon encounter dose of reality

SEPP Blatter's 6+5 proposal is based on an admirable principle. Having seen power on and off the pitch concentrated in the hands of a small group of extremely wealthy clubs, the Fifa president wants to reintroduce greater competition, and therefore make the outcome of league championships less predictable.

This desire will find a lot of support from fans of smaller clubs who believe they have been edged out of the market. In Scotland, anyone who does not support the Old Firm would be keen on anything which helped other teams mount a challenge. In England, fans who recall the days when Nottingham Forest or Derby County could win the league would surely lend their backing to anything which threatened to break the stranglehold of the Big Four.

Blatter's other declared motivation is the strengthening of the national teams in countries which import a lot of players. It is no coincidence, he and his backers would argue, that the increasing wealth and cosmopolitan nature of the English Premier League should be accompanied by a weakening of the England team itself.

Again, his desire to help the grass roots of the game everywhere, by ensuring a minimum of six 'home' players in a club's starting line-up in league matches, would meet little opposition in principle. People in every country like to see young players of their own nationality break into their clubs' first teams and begin to mature as footballers.

But principle is one thing, reality another. Although it received the overwhelming backing of delegates to Fifa's annual congress yesterday, 6+5 faces a very long march through the boardrooms and courts of the world before it has a chance of being established as footballing law.

Its toughest challenge will come within the European Union, where officials have already declared it unlawful. It might do so under freedom-of-movement regulations, or on the grounds of discrimination on the basis of nationality.

The EU imposes restrictions on the rights of outsiders to work within it, but citizens of its member countries all (in theory at least) have equal rights. The minute a Frenchman, for instance, was told he could not come to work in his chosen industry in Britain because there was a quota, he could take the UK to court. And according to EU officials speaking yesterday, he would win.

Those legal objections constitute one objection to Blatter's proposals. Commitment to the free market is another.

It is a curious case that the country which purports to be the paragon of free enterprise, the United States, has the leading example in world sport of a deliberate anti-free-market, levelling-down system – the yearly draft in American football which gives the worst teams the first pick of rookie professionals. In most other countries, in every other sport, those clubs with the business sense or good luck to become richer than the rest are allowed to spend their money on whichever players they can attract.

Blatter's argument is that in some countries the leading clubs are now so dominant that they have effectively killed off the free market. But it would be foolish to think that football will henceforth stand still, and that Manchester United and Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal, for example, will always rule the roost in England.

The desire to make league football more dynamic is laudable. Trying to do so by imposing quotas, however, is a retrograde step.

Premier League fears quality would diminish

WHILE the Football Association voted for the 6+5 proposal and offered it their quality support, the Premier League – whose ultimate priority is maintaining the quality and profile of the English top flight competition – issued a statement insisting while they share a desire to see more home-grown players, it must remain fair.

"EU official spokespeople have repeatedly said that a nationality-based player quota system would be unlawful within the European Union," the statement said.

"They have also stated that any form of gentleman's agreement to achieve this objective would be instantly challengeable.

"We want to see the greatest possible number of England-qualified players coming through in the Premier League, but this has to be based on merit and quality, and there is no doubting that foreign talent has aided the technical development of the English game."

Football Association technical director Trevor Brooking doubts whether Sepp Blatter's proposal to increase the number of homegrown players in club sides will be successful due to the constraints of European law.

Blatter is keen to have a split of six locally-produced players and five foreign players in each team. At present, only around 40 per cent of players in the Barclays Premier League are eligible to play for England after the influx of players from overseas in recent years.

Brooking backs Blatter's desire to encourage the development of domestic talent, but is sceptical over the chances of his motion being implemented.

"In principle, I support what he is saying. It is beneficial. I can see why he wants it to happen, but European law makes it very difficult," Brooking said.

"You have to try to get your own homegrown players through on merit and that is the long-term aim.

"England suffers more than most with the current situation and, like I said, it will not be easy to change it because of European law.

"Of course, you could go with a gentleman's agreement whereby clubs would only field so many home-grown and so many foreign players. But I don't think you will get an agreement with all the clubs because they will think they are then uncompetitive alongside other European countries."

England coach Fabio Capello has already bemoaned the lack of players he has at his disposal and knows a change in the rules will only serve to benefit the his team in their bid for international honours.

Cautiously optimistic Smith is in favour

THE Scottish Football Association voted for the 6+5 proposal at Fifa's annual congress in Sydney, but, in common it seems with many other governing bodies, did so with some reservations. Gordon Smith, the SFA's chief executive, suggested that if the measure did eventually become footballing law, it would have a stronger impact on other, bigger countries.

"The difficulty will be in some of the countries where they import a lot of foreign players," Smith said in Sydney following yesterday's vote. "I think in Scotland we are developing more home-grown talent than in recent years. The international team is at as good a level as it has been for quite some time."

Smith, who played in Austria and Switzerland as well as in Scotland and England, added: "I'm not against foreign players – I was one myself in three different countries – so I'm all for people moving about. But I think a restriction might help to a degree."

One issue which may yet cause Scotland serious cause for concern, however, could arise if the word 'foreign' is interpreted to mean someone who is not from the nation, rather than the state, they play in. In other words, if players of English, Welsh or Northern Irish origin are declared to be 'foreign' to Scotland, our clubs would face a lot more difficulty than they would if being a British citizen were the sole criterion for qualifying as one of the six domestic players.

No-one at Fifa was able to clarify the matter, and the SFA was similarly unsure. The only hint of the intentions regarding British clubs came when Sepp Blatter, the president of Fifa, talked about how many national players were involved in the recent Champions League and Uefa Cup finals.

"We have had Manchester United winning the European Champions League with six players eligible for the Great Britain team at the beginning of the match, so we are not far away," he said. "Chelsea had four. Zenit St Petersburg, when they played Glasgow Rangers, they had up to seven. Glasgow had four or five."

Officials from outwith the United Kingdom often fail to appreciate the difference between England and the whole of the UK, but as a seasoned sports politician Blatter is well aware of the uniquely privileged position within football of the four home nations, and therefore chose his words with care.

In other words, under that interpretation of the proposal, Rangers for example would be free to start a game with 11 Englishmen, or Chelsea with as many Scots as they wanted. Such latitude, however, will surely be opposed by clubs from other federations.