When Ronaldinho was 21, there was a moderate amount of interest to sign him. A few big clubs were interested, but they weren’t wild about him… After all, he ended up going to PSG for a very reasonable amount, so it wasn’t wild love with any big club. But think about that again. What club would even think of buying a player like Ronaldinho if the 6+5 was working then? For sure, “big” clubs wouldn’t have looked at him, because they knew he wasn’t yet able to fight for a starting place with their other international players. But in fact, even PSG wouldn’t have attempted to sign him, nor any club of PSG’s level. I mean, look at how many foreigners PSG had in 2001 : Agostinho (Portugal), Alex (Brazil), Aloisio (Brazil), Arteta (Spain), Benachour (Tunisia), Benarbia (Algeria), Cristian (Brazil), Cissé (Senegal), Aguilera (Spain), Martinez (Spain), Diawara (Guinea), El Karkouri (Morocco), Heinze (Argentina), Leal (Portugal), Ogbeche (Nigeria), Okocha (Nigeria), Okpara (Nigeria), Pochettino (Argentina), Vampeta (Brazil), Yanovski (Russia)… And you’ve got to remember that with the 6+5, a lot of french players that played abroad would have returned to France, and the overall level of foreigners in clubs would have increased (Real Madrid, Barça, Manchester and Juventus would have bought the best 7-8 foreigners money can buy, but they’d “only” have those players, leaving the other 5-6 they had in their squad to leave to “lesser” clubs, meaning these clubs would change their foreigners, etc…), so do you really think any club would have risked bringing on Ronaldinho? I honestly don’t think so.

And you just repeat that time and time again. Overall, you’re going to wait for Brazilian leagues to separate the good from the bad, and then buy their best players… By the time they’re 25. Brazilian players don’t win, Brazil doesn’t win (fewer players playing high level competitive football), and the spectators don’t win.

If you (or Mr Blatter) want to watch games that are pretty much along the lines of the 6+5, just watch a DVD of any competition before the bosman ruling. Things weren’t better (from 77 to 86, the 9 ECC finals yeilded 9 goals… seven 1-0s, one 1-1, and one 0-0… That’s fewer goals than over the last 3 CL finals…), and they were often worse, as the 1990 Milan side proved… 9 games, seven times only one goal scored, once two goals, and once four (against the finnish champions in the first round)… Milan played so defensively that Chelsea today look like an attacking festival. Every game that Milan played, they spent more time passing the ball around in midfield than going forwards. But it’s true that it would be unfair to say that Milan were the only boring side. I mean, Benfica didn’t ever really seem to be interested in attacking… So no doubt the final was boring. But after all, Benfica had won all their games so far by playing on the counter-attack… So it’s no wonder that Milan played to prevent the counter, leaving a boring final to cap a boring ECC. And yes, it was a final in the perfect tradition of the 6+5. If you’re not yet convinced, watch the PSV-Benfica final of 1988. It’s not much better…

Honestly, this seems like Sepp Blatter yet again doing something incredibly idiotic and offensive. Hey, England is having a hard time qualifying and doing well. I know, let’s cripple every poor nation so that the England team can be better. Very colonialist.

I won’t explain now (I’ve got to leave IRL in a few minutes) however.

But there are a few things that bothers me about the 6+5…

– What are all the african players going to do? Return to their country and play in shitty leagues? Join second division, third division leagues? 6+5 would harm african football undoubtedly.
– Won’t the 6+5 lead to more and more players being pressurised to either not play for their country (no sporting nationality), or to chose to play for a country of adoption, despite having no feeling for it? Would Messi not have been massively pressurised to play for Spain? Would Ronaldinho have been able to come to PSG when the squad was already full of foreigners? How is Blatter expecting the level of play to be “better” if you start sending all the brazilians back to brazil, the argentines back to argentina, etc? Surely young players with the choice between sevral nationalities (like Gio Dos Santos) would choose a country in Europe in order to play in Europe, even if it’s not what he’d want.
– How is FIFA going to get round obvious legal problems? I mean, to take two cases : the UK, and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the league is one of the best followed in Asia (not the best, but still good, pretty much like Portugal in Europe). However, the players are often Chinese nationals. Hong Kong is part of the Chinese territory, but sportingly, a different system. How would the 6+5 be applied? Chinese players are… Nationals? Non-nationals? Heck, I don’t know how they’d work that one out. But if you take the UK, it’ll be even worse. FIFA doesn’t recognise the United Kingdom, only the 4 associations. But UK law and EU law say that there can be no discrimination based on location of birth. So would a scottish player be a “foreign” player en England? For FIFA, yes, but for the UK’s legal system, it’s discrimination. So players like Fletcher and Giggs wouldn’t count towards the “foreign” count. But then, if it’s not by sporting nationality, then what stops players like O’Shea from challenging the ruling in front of the EU? Surely if Fletcher can play, then it’s not a “nationals” or “non-nationals”, because FIFA doesn’t recognise the UK… So for FIFA scottish players are non-english, just like irish players! So if scottish players are given the same rights as english players, then surely this must be extended to irish, french and all other member states of the EU, and the Cotonou agreement… Meaning that nothing will change…

I’m dissapointed by the 6+5. After all, shouldn’t UEFA be happy that England isn’t a footballing superpower? I mean, France, Italy and Spain surely don’t want to go back to the 70s and 80s, when English clubs were the best in clubs competitions (9 finals in 11 years from 75 to 85) even without foreign players, do they?

To me, it sounds a lot like sour grapes. Nobody criticised Barcelona’s win in 2006, even though they only had 3 spanish players on the pitch for the final, and preferred to look at Arsenal’s “foreign” side… With “only” two english players.

Even on this site, a lot of people were happy at Fenerbahce’s “wonder story”… Yet it would have been impossible without loads of foreign players… Deivid, Lugano, Wederson, Kezman, Aurelio, Alex, Maldonado, Edu, as well as Turac, who played for the Belgian U-21 before choosing to represent Turkey at international level, and Kazim-Richards, who grew up in Englad… I mean, it’s all very nice to think that clubs with foreign players are nasty and such, but Fenerbahce’s 8 foreign players in their starting XI isn’t any better than Chelsea (Cole, Cole, Terry and Lampard are the only regular English starters), yet a lot of people were overjoyed at the idea of Fenerbahce getting to the semi-finals… Talk about two weights, two measures, eh?

However, it would be neat to see some sort of summer cup where teams of top flight pro players are assembled based on their home towns, ie. ManU would field a team entirely of players who grew up in Manchester, etc. Like the old old days when local clubs were actually made up of local players. I think it would be amusing.

The Brazilian national team doesn’t seem to suffer from the lack of quality in the Brazilian league. Same can be said for the Argentines.

I find Blatter’s argument to be based on false assumptions. It’s like he wants to turn back the clock before the EU started. You can’t.

Wenger doesn’t buy English players because they are overpriced. If Jermaine DeFoe wasn’t English would he have fetched that same transfer market price? Not a chance.

If the English want to have one of the best leagues in the world to watch live then adopting Blatter’s rules would mean that you would have the fourth or fifth best league in the world at best. You’d be passed by France, Germany, Spain would still get the Brazillians, and Italy wouldn’t be hurt at all.

No doubt Scunthorpe is a douche but seriously you probably want to look past that and see how much worse things could be for your national team if your best players were facing Crystal Palace quality on a regular basis.

The rest of the premier league has had to follow.

I’d like to say the best thing we could do would be to put an asbo on Arsen Venger and kick him out of the country.