Too Many Foreigners?

A question has arisen in the past few months about the great game of football in our country, and it all has to do with a Belgian who, until a few years ago hardly anyone in this country had ever heard of.

Jean-Marc Bosman, the aforementioned Belgian, successfully won an appeal from his club, who wanted to hold onto him despite his contract having expired. When he won his case in the European courts, it sent reverberations around the footballing world.

The number of foreigners a team playing in the European union was now no longer restricted to two or three, and this, for many people, is where the problem started.

Up until this time, home-grown stars were supplemented by foreign stars. We saw the likes of Ardiles and Villa at Spurs, Muhren and Thijsen at Ipswich, Molby and Johnston at Liverpool and so forth.

But the Bosman ruling changed all that. Now, a team could field as may foreigners as they like, and this, for many, is where the trouble began.

Instead of trying to nurture young players, bring them through the youth systems of clubs, which has produced the likes of Michael Owen, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Rio Ferdinand, many of the larger clubs brought in top stars from around the world. The likes of Bergkamp, Vialli, Di Matteo, Zola, Lebeouf, Juninho and Ravanelli graced the Premiership stage, and many people began to wonder - will this stop the home-grown talent coming through?

One only has to look at Chelsea these days to see what is happening. Recently, they fielded a team with only one Englishman in - Graeme Le Saux. Surely this can't be good for the English game or national team. The likes of Jody Morris, a highly rated youngster, just can't get into the team. Perhaps that is the reason that Darren Huckerby left Newcastle for Coventry, where he is now on the verge of an England call-up.

In years to become, I believe that this may pose a problem for whoever is picking the England team. Like the Wales and Northern Ireland managers in years gone by they may be forced to look to the lower leagues for their squad players, and this could be harmful because playing at this standard would not prepare them for playing on a world stage.

Although I don't think these players should be stopped from playing in this country, I believe it could, in the long run, prove disastrous for the England team.