Wouldn’t it just force them to focus on training young players? Like you said, local players prices will increase, so the clubs who manage to produce better talents will develop considerably: they will be able to sell their young players for more money.

“Oh — one final thing, under a 6+5 rule, the game can say goodbye to players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Adebayor, George Weah, Essien, Hleb, Roque Santa Cruz, Eto’o, the Toure brothers and so many others.”

I disagree strongly here. Essien is the perfect example that it will always be possible for exceptional foreign players to break through: He came to France in Bastia first. THEN moved to Lyon. Maybe they won’t be recruited by Arsenal at 17, but they’ll be able to join smaller teams and start from there.
It’s 6+5, not 11+0, and it’s the same for all 20 teams of each league. That’s plenty of room for great players to develop.

Yes, I’m an Arsenal supporter. Regardless of what you may think, my position on this issue would be exactly the same were I a supporter of Everton or Villareal or Marseille. I agree that you don’t have to be racist to favor this rule but you are wrong to believe that the only arguments against it are based on the erroneous charge of racism.

The basic problem with this rule is that it assumes that all countries have the same level and quality of player development at the grassroots — and that all countries have the same financial set-up in terms of player pricing.

Countries like Italy and France can afford to impose a player quota for the simple reason that they have a deep pool of talent to recruit from within their own countries. They have excellent grassroots player development systems. Notice, however, that even they dip into the foreign transfer market more and more.

What about countries that do not have the same grassroots culture that France and Italy have? England, of course, is the obvious example. For England to reach even the halfway point of what France, Italy and Holland have achieved (developing players from young ages in good technical skills that will allow them to compete on the int’l stage), England will need at least 20 years worth of dramatic changes in its very backward youth football culture. And 20 years is optimistic.

England simply does not have the kind of pool of talent that France and Italy have because English kids are not taught good basics of technique, nor are English coaches capable of imparting these skills to them.

It is no accident that the higher up you go in the English league, the fewer English players you see–the fact is that there are very very few English kids with the skills and talent to compete at the very highest levels. Man Utd and Chelsea may have English players but they’re all getting older and there aren’t any young ones coming thru from their academies. And I don’t see either club buying up any in the transfer market.

Furthermore, a player quota will drive up player prices to obscene levels. In England, this will be catastrophic because prices of English players are already outrageously inflated. Foreign clubs don’t bid for even the best English players because their prices are ridiculous. If you want to just buy a good English footballer (not great, just decent), you have to pay at least 10 million POUNDS or more.

A player quota will drive prices up for local players in all European leagues to ridiculous levels, as clubs seek to follow this rigid quota. Big clubs will hoard all the better local talent, leaving the dross for smaller clubs to divide among themselves. How does this achieve competitiveness? For a small club to be competitive, they need to be able to buy good affordable players regardless of nationality. Now this new element of nationality will further limit their choices, and their competitiveness.

This thoroughly naive, blinkered idea will also prioritize nationality before merit. Managers will now have to add a new element in their decision-making for tactics, strategy, team selection. Merit and quality won’t be enough. Managers will be forced to use players because of their nationality (and maybe risk losing games) rather than the needs of the game. And what about injuries, suspensions? How can a manager balance following such a rigid rule given the vagaries of the game?

I’m sorry but this is a deeply idiotic idea that–like all stupid ideas–tries to fix a problem by attacking the symptom rather than the CAUSE. So go ahead and force managers to choose their players based on nationality and not on merit, while failing to address the dysfunctional problems with the quality of player development at the grassroots.

And watch as the quality of the game declines and the monopoly of the big clubs over the best local players becomes even more of a stanglehold.

Oh — one final thing, under a 6+5 rule, the game can say goodbye to players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Adebayor, George Weah, Essien, Hleb, Roque Santa Cruz, Eto’o, the Toure brothers and so many others. Why? Because those players will be forced to stay home and never develop their game and break into the highest levels, never fulfill their potential. It would hurt even a player from the Barca academy like Fabregas–at Barca he was ignored and undervalued, stuck in the reserves, not considered to be a future prospect for them.

It is a stupid, stupid idea.