The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) celebrated its 100th anniversary recently and some of the more intelligent press took the opportunity to provide some interesting historical analysis. Most pointed out that the original union formed with very limited aims. No, no talk in 1907 of freedom of contracts, image rights and intellectual copyright: instead the initial goal was simply to increase the maximum wage from five to seven pounds a week. Its subsequent success can best be measured by the fact that 50 years later, the maximum wage stood at just twelve pounds a week. Fifty years on from that, well, there is no maximum wage. Talk now is of how the “freedom of contract” has shifted the balance of power within the game to individual players and is expressed in six-figure weekly wages, and multi-million pound image rights, sponsorships and endorsements. This has given modern players the riches that, as a free market dictates, they deserve in comparison to other sports performers.
During the week though, there were reports of “demands” made by the PFA Chief Executive, Gordon Taylor, calling for a quota system on English players. At first glance, and at face value, these demands would appear to be a retro-step in the quality and entertainment value of English football. It is also unlikely in itself, as has been argued on RTG’s pages before, to produce the quality players to make the national team successful.
However, on closer inspection, what Gordon Taylor was really asking for was a quota on including a certain number of “home grown” academy players not only in first team squads, as suggested by UEFA, but the first team itself – irrespective of the nationality of those academy players. The hope would be that, as around 85% of academy players are currently English, this would translate into a technically more accomplished and larger pool of players available to the national squad. But, would it? What is the reality behind the quota idea? Certainly in the short term, it would be a constraint imposed on English teams throughout the league – perhaps affecting European aspirations most of all. Longer term, would it not simply shift the competition amongst clubs for recruiting players to ever younger targets? The prospect of multi millionaire 10 year olds looms larger!
These points are all worthy of debate, but the main driving force of this week’s issues raised by the PFA was a report, commissioned by them, which detailed the tremendous increase of non English players in the premiership. Since the advent of the club academy system, around 10 years ago, 120 young English men have graduated to first team football. In the same period, 617 foreign players have arrived in the premiership. A sobering statistic indeed. The report’s most surprising fact of all was that since the premiership started the number of English players involved has actually increased from 128 to 246 last season. A fact presumably explained by the modern need for much larger squads. Sadly, RTG doesn’t know how many of those 246 are considered first teamers. We suspect far less as a percentage, and in actual numbers, than in the premiership’s inaugural season.
The quota system, whilst worthy of debate, offers a too simplistic and narrow solution to England’s present woes. There are enormous cultural and educational issues that are greater even than football, which have a hugely significant impact on the development of players in this country. Why are there many thousands, yes thousands, of Brazilians playing professionally throughout the world outside of Brazil? The answer is that for the vast majority of those thousands, football is a way out of the violence and despair of the poverty stricken favellas. As Harry Redknapp mused on the answer to a question posed by a reporter, asking why he appeared to favour managing foreigners as opposed to English talent, he explained, the relative expense of signing English players was a problem, but that the most important point was the perceived lack of commitment from English kids. “Kids would rather be stuck indoors in front of their computer screens, playing games and surfing the ‘net. You just don’t see kids kicking the ball about in a park these days”.
Reclaim the Game – The Weekend’s Events
- Congratulations to Ryan Giggs for joining the exclusive group of players who have scored 100 league goals at the top level. He joins another 10 of the all time Manchester United greats which includes Best, Law and Charlton. Perhaps his most unwitting success was to be popular outside of Man United’s supporter base. No mean feat in itself.
- With all this talk of recession and credit squeezes, and with the transfer window opening in 3 weeks, the newspapers seem unsure of their scope for bullshit transfer stories. Still let’s hope for their sake that the FA doesn’t come up with an appointment to the England manager’s job. What on earth would they be able to speculate about?
Hat's Off, Take a Bow (or not)!
Player of the Week: Aiyegbeni Yakuba scoring his first hat-trick for Everton. Suddenly, people are beginning to wake up to the fact that he has been the most prolific striker in the premiership since his arrival on these shores. This excludes those that have departed the premiership (eg Henry van Nistelrooy), but still...
Hero of the Week: Ryan Giggs. As mentionned above.
Villain of the Week: Cristiano Ronaldo. Having elicited all the sympathy vote for his unjust booking and not winning a penalty last Monday night against Fulham, he spoils it all by doing the classic "there's a defender's leg, trip over it" to win one unjustly against Derby on Saturday. Curiously, he was defended by Andy Gray, who thought it was very "professional" and that he was "entitled" to go down. Nowadays, when Andy Gray says "professional", RTG hears "cheating".
Shock of the Week: Reading gaining their first win over a big four side (Liverpool). In this case, whilst the defeat of a much in-form Liverpool side was a surprise in itself, perhaps the biggest shock was that it was only their first win of this type. Reading's performances in their first two ever seasons in the top flight have been laudable as well as eye-catching.
Cliche of the Week: any simple, one sided argument that promises to right all that is wrong with English football. It just "aint" that simple.
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