Home Grown Rule set for 2009

A piece of news this week that slipped through the net fairly quietly was one that could cause a fair amount of uproar if it comes to fruition.

The Football League has announced that they are to hold talks on introducing a ‘home grown’ players rule, starting from 2009. Okay, so they’ve probably had a lot of these talks before, but it is still an exciting time.

The new idea to be discussed involves each Football League club being required to have at least four of the match-day 16 ‘to have been registered domestically, for a minimum of three seasons, prior to their 21st birthday’.

That means, then, that each team will have to involve four English players in their squad each week.

At first, this may sound quite surprising, and a big change. However, this is not applying to the Premier League, and will only be brought in to Football League clubs, who rarely have more than 5 or 6 foreign players to begin with.

Football League Chairman Lord Mawhinney said, "The aim is to establish this principle by setting a threshold that our clubs can accommodate and then to consider raising that level over time.

"It is important we demonstrate that, as a body of clubs, our commitment to youth development is total.”

The meeting will take place on December 18th at Derby County’s Pride Park, with league officials and club representatives in attendance.

The plans come after Sepp Blatter’s controversial ‘six plus five’ system fell by the wayside. The concept involved having six English players in each team, but there were fears that this would breach certain EU laws regarding rights of players in terms of equality.

It seems quite unlikely that this will be implemented by the 2009 season as planned, or even that it will come into place altogether, but it is another positive step.

There are some fantastic academies throughout the football League, such as Crystal Palace’s or Crewe Alexandra’s, but these cannot fund themselves forever if English youngsters are preferred to foreign players.

This initiative is the first (and quite small) step to bringing more English lads through the system, and hopefully rewarding the academies which lose money producing England’s next talent.

After all, 14 of the 23 players who beat Germany in Berlin last week came through Football League Academies.
That speaks volumes, so lets keep the academies open and keep the local players in our teams.