Sepp Blatter - Idiot.

Apologies for the lateness of this blog, and the lack of the normal news and transfer gossip round-up, but I have been busy and tired today, and I can't be arsed. What I would like to do is to provide my thoughts about Fifa's and Sepp Blatter's quotas system for foreign players. This issue has been around for a while, and has resurfaced today because of reports that there are fewer players qualified to play for England playing in the Premier League than ever before. Fifa has outlined a plan to limit the number of foreign players in any team, which it believes will help strengthen national teams. The plans are outlined in more detail here.

To put it succinctly, the plans are complete and utter bilge. They are unworkable, illogical and against all (that I believe) football should stand for. There are several main reasons why I feel the quotas system will fail; I will discuss each of these separately. These reasons are: it is illegal under EU law, it will dramatically lower the standard of the top leagues, it will, contrary to its claims, make these leagues less competitive, it will cause most clubs huge financial problems and it will not strengthen national sides.

Firstly, and most obviously, the system must overcome huge legal obstacles to its introduction. In the EU, it is illegal to discriminate between workers from the EU on the basis of the country they come from. I don't know even nearly enough about EU law to go into this in more detail, so if anyone knows more, please let me know in the comments section.

The Premier League stands to suffer more than most from this potential system. If it was implemented, almost all of the clubs currently playing in the league would quickly have to find more English players. As there are very few English players playing overseas, there new players would have to come from the country's lower leagues or the clubs academies. Whilst there may well be an advantage to giving youngsters more experience at an early stage, I believe that most of the deficit would be made up by players playing in the Championship or at a lower level. Anyone who has watched the Championship on a regular basis will understand that filling the Premiership with players from that level would be hugely detrimental to the quality of the football played.

If the quotas system was imposed, the value of English players would increase hugely. Even today, English players tend to be vastly overpriced, but in a league operating a quotas system this trend would be increased dramatically. It is basic economics of supply and demand; if the demand for English players surges (as it would if most of the league desperately need to find new players) then their values would increase. I believe that this would end in a situation when only the top few clubs would be able to afford the best players (even more so than today). The current stars of the England team (i.e. Jole Cole, John Terry, Frank Lampard) would command ridiculous transfer fees, if they were ever sold, whilst second-rank players such as Gareth Barry, Ashley Young or Jermaine Defoe would cost as much as world-class players do today, so that only the biggest clubs could afford them. The monopolization of the top few places in the league, and thus entry to the Champions League would increase, as only the big clubs could afford good English players, decreasing the competitiveness of the league.

The system would also lead to a massive devaluation of most club's squads. If a club has too many foreign players, these players become effectively worthless. Other clubs will realise this, and if a team tries to raise money to buy more English players by selling of its foreign ones, they will receive only a fraction of the price they would get in the current market. This would mean that club's would lose huge amounts of money, and many, with their budgets already overstretched, would be left in financial crisis.

The English national side would not benefit from these changes. The best players make it to the top regardless of their nationality, as evidenced by the high percentage of the England squad playing regularly in the Champions League. A system of quotas would not create more Steven Gerrards or Wayne Rooneys, players with that amount of potential are already identified at very early ages, and, if injuries and behaviour allow, almost always fulfil their potential. All that a quotas system would achieve would be increasing the level of mediocre players playing at the top level.

I feel that Fifa's motivations for this system are less altruistic than they would have us believe. I believe that their main interest is actually to lessen the world-wide commercial, and European footballing domination of the English Premier League, which is, by far, the most popular league in the world, and has proven to be the dominant force in European football in recent years. I urge all football fans to understand the potential repurcussions this scheme could possibly have, and to resist it by all means possible.

Rant over, back to normal service tomorrow.