Why the French Want 6+5

By: Laurie | June 23rd, 2008

FIFA head honcho Sepp Blatter met with several French football figures this week. The topic? Sepp’s controversial 6+5 proposal. The result? Overwhelming French support.

FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter held very productive meetings regarding “6+5″ with French sports minister Bernard Laporte and a delegation representing FIFPro at the Home of FIFA in Zurich this week.

On Tuesday 17 June, the FIFA President welcomed Mr Laporte to a meeting that was also attended by President of the French FA Jean-Pierre Escalettes and President of the French League Frédéric Thiriez. Commenting on this meeting the next day in a programme on French television channel Canal+, the French sports minister said: “I told Mr Blatter that I think the 6+5 proposal is a good idea. I think it is in the interest of all of us, of education and of our young players, and that it applies not only to football, but also to rugby, volleyball and indeed all sports. It is our responsibility to debate this issue and examine it fully.”

You probably recall that 6+5 is FIFA’s proposal that would require all teams to start no fewer that 6 players who would be eligible to play for the national team of their club’s country. When we at The Offside put it to the vote last month, the result was overwhelmingly against it. Yet the FIFA vote was overwhelmingly for it.

This has been presented largely as a race/xenophobia issue. Or, in other words, it’s about the white countries keeping the “others” (i.e. non-whites/non-Western Europeans) out. But the France situation shows that the issue is more complicated.

It would be difficult for anybody to argue that French football is racist. France society may still struggle with integration, but France football has been a model of colorblindness for years. Black, blanc, beur (black, white, Arab) has been the national team’s motto since at least the 1998 World Cup win. Former captain and legend Zinedine Zidane is of Kabyle Algerian descent. Current captain Patrick Vieira was born in Africa (Senegal) and moved to France at a young age. At any given time, as many as eight or nine of the French starters are non-white.

So if this isn’t a race issue, what is behind France’s support of 6+5?

In a nutshell, France is a net exporter of footballing talent. Their youth academies are among the best in the world and create players with very solid technical and tactical skills. Yet when players get anywhere close to the pinnacle of their success, they tend to move elsewhere. Playing an entire career in France’s Ligue 1 is almost a mark of failure. Established talents like Zidane, Vieira, Lilian Thuram, Claude Makelele, Patrice Evra, William Gallas, Nicolas Anelka, Franck Ribery, and even younger talents like Mathieu Flamini, Lassana Diarra, Bakary Sagna and Gael Clichy mark their success by moving to other leagues.

There are many complicated reasons for this. The major one is the financial situation in Ligue 1, where high French tax brackets mean that clubs must pay far more to give a player the same takehome pay that he would get in, say, the English Premier League. And financial rules that require French clubs to operate in the black limit their ability to borrow money to keep good players — something that clubs in the EPL, as one example, don’t experience. This makes it nearly impossible for Ligue 1 teams to offer the salaries that players might receive in other leagues.

Many in the footballing establishment of France and other smaller countries see 6+5 as a fairly easy, painless way to reestablish some sort of balance. They may not be able to change French tax law, but with 6+5 they could change the number of teams in other countries that would be willing or able to provide higher-paying jobs to their players. Fewer higher-paying jobs abroad might mean that more players would stay home. More players at home might mean better international competitiveness in venues like the high-profile, high-profit Champions League. This could eventually lead to more money coming into French football, which could then allow French teams to provide higher salaries. And this might lead to a world where three of the four Champions League semifinalists aren’t EPL teams.

Would it work out this way? Who knows?

But people who present 6+5 as a simple matter of racism and/or xenophobia are oversimplifying a complex issue.