With the signings of Jonjo Shelvey and Raheem Sterling completed already and Danny Wilson looking certain to join Liverpool at the start of the transfer window, we are seeing a very noticeable trend from Rafa Benitez: these players are all talented and they are all British. The Premier League’s new quota system will be in play for the coming season and some have curiously wondered if Benitez has only purchased these young players to appease the regulations.
The new quota system is following from the Uefa model: 8 from a squad of 25 must be ‘locally produced’, with at least four being trained at the club for at least three years between the ages of 16-21. Likewise, the Football League has specified that 4 of the match day squad of 16 must be locally produced on the same terms. Benitez had voiced his concerns last year when the regulations were approved:
“Maybe it has been brought in too soon. In the Champions League we had two or three years to increase the numbers of home-grown players. The problem in England is that there is a big gap between the academies and the first team…It may now be difficult to maintain quality but we will continue to do our best. The number of players is not the point, the quality is the point.”
Benitez was not the only manager at the time to oppose the ruling as Arsene Wenger also voiced his concerns about the quality of players brought in:
“I feel that when you want to see the best players in the best league in the world, you have to be open. To accept competition – and we live for competition – it is not to accept artificial rules and that is why I am against it.”
Wenger’s pessimism about the move is definitely rooted in belief rather than the potentially adverse affects it could have on Arsenal because under the ruling most of his starting team, irrespective of nationality, come under the category of ‘locally produced’ (Fabregas, Song, Clichy, and Denilson for example). With Benitez however, the need for home-grown talent is more palpable. This season has seen the Liverpool manager speak passionately about bringing in good English players who understand the history of the club:
“I was trying to sign Gareth Barry before and Glen Johnson was the same idea: we were trying to bring in British players with passion. Players who could feel what Liverpool means for them. Shelvey is one of these and we have two or three names ready so we will try to do the best for the club.”
I definitely believe the new regulations have facilitated Benitez’s desire for English players but in Shelvey and Sterling, Liverpool have landed hotly sought after talent. If, at such a young age, the two English teenagers had garnered the affections of a host of top Premier League teams (which definitely has been the case) then obviously there is talent. Whether Benitez has been sped up by the official need to bolster the future prosperity of his squad is beside the point because all three of the mentioned players would have made the step up, such was the interest shown. It is now the job of Rodolfo Borrell and Liverpool’s academy to ensure the talent of these players can be nurtured (incidentally, the 15 year old Sterling scored on his debut against Everton’s U18).
A stumbling block is that these regulations by no means guarantee success for home-grown players. They do however offer better opportunity. But does this opportunity come as a detriment to the League’s quality?
“We are not protectionist and we do not want artificial limits on who can come in. What we do want is to raise standards so that the English talent emerges and negates the need for clubs to bring in foreign talent,” Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the League, said. “But I am a pragmatist, and the quotas have clearly not hurt our teams in the Champions League; in fact we have had our most successful run in the competition since they came in.”
Scudamore has a valid point. And if someone with the free-market inclinations he possesses can temper those instincts with a need to see home-grown talent developed then I think the benefits of the regulations may be felt; after all it doesn’t matter that the young players Benitez has brought in are English because it was their talent, before their nationality, that brought them to multiple clubs’ attention.
The trouble I find with the new regulations however lie in what Wenger has articulated. Quality should be the only prerequisite to a player’s success. Shelvey, Sterling and Wilson have all been written and spoken about very highly. What happens when there just isn’t the wealth of young home-grown talent available to be plucked? The limitations of the ruling affect quality, not just nationality, and therefore are definitely protectionist by design. It is whether being protectionist is actually a detrimental thing for this country’s long term footballing future that remains to be seen.
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