Monday, 21 May 2012

The Premier League Home-Grown Players Rule


There are two significant adverse effects of the home-grown players rule particularly at the highest level; 1) the artificial inflation of the value of domestic based players and 2) the earlier purchase of foreign youth players.
For those of you not accustom to the home-grown players rule it is a UEFA creation that has been implemented with only slight adaption for the Premier League. In a 25-man squad, 8 players must be ‘home grown’, this can be defined as a player (of any nationality) trained for 3 years by a club in the English or Welsh FA under the age of 21. The aim of it is as stated by Richard Scudamore of the Premier League is:
...it will give clubs an extra incentive to invest in youth. We think that one of the benefits will be that it will help the England team.
Intrinsically, there is a propensity for a home grown player to be English or Welsh, and therefore this requirement obviously increases the value of these players to Premier League clubs, artificially inflating the asset value of these typical domestic players against typical foreign ones. For this reason a club may be inclined to ensure they fulfill their quota of these ‘home grown players’ and as soon as achieved then change their transfer strategy entirely to foreign players to seek real value for money.
Interestingly, on implementation of this rule the Premier League club most affected, aka the club with the least amount of 'home grown players' already was Liverpool. Did they not recently spend £35m on Andy Carroll, £20m on Stewart Downing and £20m on Jordan Henderson? Were they redressing their balance in accordance with this rule? Does anyone else think these values may have been artificially inflated because of Liverpool’s need to adapt to the rule or is it a coincidence?
Also, anyone heavily involved in academy football, like Simply Sport is, can observe there has been no let up in the amount of foreign youth footballers joining Premier League academies. There is now an actual reason to buy a foreign player aged 16 or 17 than to continue to scout them and perhaps purchase them aged 20 – and that reason is if a club can sign him before he is 18 he could count as a ‘home-grown player’ when he turns 21. This will help that club fulfill its home grown quota in the future and also know that being a home grown player will add to his value in the future if and when they are to sell. Therefore there is more of an incentive to bring in foreign players at a younger age than ever before. 
Now, I’m not against the rule – I think it serves a purpose and it does force clubs to focus more on what they’re doing at youth level. However, I just wanted to use this blog to highlight the problems the rule can also create and that there should be open dialogue going forward as to how the rule could be adapted for improvement.  

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