From the BBC:
British football could be radically changed if the UK votes to leave the European Union, according to experts and leading voices in the game.
Some fear so-called Brexit could lead to more than 400 players losing the right to play in the UK, while others say it may give home talent a chance.
Woah!
1. There are those who say there are too many foreign players in English football, so that could be seen as a good thing.
2. It appears the FA has haggled its own rules on who can and can't play here.
3. A lot of foreign players are from non-EU countries, we can assume that even if the government aligns rules for European and non-European players, there will still be plenty of them.
4. Who cares? Football is a game, there are rules, if the rules change (such as the UEFA 'Fair Play' rules) then it is still a game and people's enjoyment of it will not be affected one jot.
Even China Isn't That Heartless...
37 minutes ago
7 comments:
"people's enjoyment of it will not be affected one jot."
I agree. If nothing else the EU referendum has highlighted yet again how any rubbish argument will do when comfort zones are threatened.
The no diminishment of enjoyment argument won't wash: Arsenal without Ozil (German) : West Ham without Payet (French) would be very much less worth watching.And the fans would be outraged by purely political bans.
Part of the pleasure of watching football is in surrogate management: downtrodden employees can work out how the team and its performance can be improved by different tactical arrangements and buying in good players, and can make their feelings known without victimisation or getting the sack as the merest breath of criticism of the management at work can lead to.This imaginative involvement is repulsed by bans based on nationality of any kind.The No to Racism campaign in football reflects this.
This is not the time to be calling for the weakening Of Europe with
the upper class ne'er do wells Cameron and Osborne doing their best to stymy EU moves to raise European tariffs on Chinese steel in line with the Anericans.
I agree with DBC Reed here. It helps to have the best in the world to make the most entertaining football. Even as someone who doesn't follow it, I get that.
That said, this is just nonsense for the reason of the fact that we have lots of Nigerians and south Americans playing. Even if we had work visas for the French and Italians, we'd still let millionaire footballers in. FFS we had a couple of Argentinians playing here when we were at war with them.
It's not the EU that made our league the success it is - it's the money from Sky subscriptions. They've milked football fans and that money has gone into players pockets. Clubs can pay more and get the best players. Whether you like that or not, that is what's happened.
Can I make a general point about the EU and a bit of an aside? We wouldn't be having this debate, this vote, this nonsense, if the EU hadn't pushed for it to be more than the people of the early states wanted. If it was Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Britain... mostly similar countries... and doing little more than free trade and standards on trade regulations, there would be very small opposition. They pushed for the Euro, for expansion into countries that are not really compatible like Greece, for the Euro, for foreign policy etc.
The problem with the remain camp is that they can't admit that that's the real problem. I mean, there was never a problem with Lineker playing in Spain, or Keegan playing in Hamburg, or Molby at Liverpool back when it was roughly that organisation.
I still think it's broadly an unfit for purpose organisation, an out-of-date organisation that fits with the world of the early 1970s when we mostly bought things from either our own country or our neighbours. We didn't even buy Japanese motorcycles then, let alone call centre services in India or toys from China (Action Man was made in Leicestershire). I've had prospects in Missouri and Bern (I write software) and that's no more bother than trading with Paris or Brussels.
AKH: "any rubbish argument will do when comfort zones are threatened" Exactly.
DBC, good point about surrogate management, that is part of the fun and that part of the fun would not be diminished one iota, would it? Just because Camerosborne are arseholes, like Blair-Brown before them is entirely irrelevant to the topic.
TS, exactly.
Back in 1993 when the EC completed the Single Market I was very pleased indeed, as I had to send a parcel from Germany back to England (birthday presents or something). The man at the post office counter gave me one of those stupid customs slips to fill in and I gave it straight back and said "Ha ha ha! Single market now, my friend, I don't need to fill that in any more" and grudgingly he accepted the parcel. That to me seemed like something voting for.
I bet he still gave the next person the stupid custom slip just for the sadistic bureaucratic fun of it though.
The fun or in a sport-mad family, the arguments, would be affected by political bans on good players. My credibility in one such family depends on seeing Mezut Ozil playing in a run-of-the-mill under 19 international and declaring "This player is an all-time great!" to great hilarity . (I followed this up by " spotting" Verratti and Griezemann and at the end of last season pronounced that over-the-hill, nowhere man Jamie Vardy was international class ). So all the fun of re-forming the side in your mind would go if certain up-and- coming European players were off limits (only for them to line up against you in the Champions League later perhaps).
I cannot see how a basically laissez faire case for Brexit could include such an anti laissez faire argument.
@TS
I find the suggestion that Spurs should have dropped Osvaldo Ardilles and Ricardo Villa merely because we were fighting Argentina decidedly off.However, your comments about how the EU grew beyond its stated objectives is pretty accurate. But it was the Americans (Clinton and Bush)who expanded the EU by splitting off the Soviet satellite nations Poland, Lithuania etc only to leave the EU to sort them out despite the huge differences in wage levels etc which the European Project was never envisaged to deal with . They then armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan with missiles and lost control of the ensuing jihads that created waves of refugees across the Middle East pushing into Europe.
The Cameron- Blair class of political deadbeats has left off brown nosing the Americans in favour of brown nosing the Chinese.
Never mind, as long a land prices recover who cares about wages and industry? (According to Martin Wolf our economy is shrinking)
DBC Reed,
Let me clarify: I wasn't saying anything about Spurs there, but that the UK government had no problem letting them remain here, despite our countries being at war, and that they weren't even in the EU. So, why wouldn't we let French or Italian players in?
I do remember how generous people (Spurs fans or otherwise) were to Ardilles and Villa at the time.
DBC, you are making stuff up as you go along. I am not anti-immigration or anti-foreign workers, which is a large part of what keeps the UK going, and I am an economic migrant myself.
So I have no strong opinions on what the rules for football should be post-Brexit. That is up to the football clubs to agree between themselves and then negotiate with the government. But it will still be football and most people won't care. Back in the 1970s when there were very few foreign players, I don't remember people crying out for them to come here. They supported their team and that was that.
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