Time For Some Premier League Clubs To Panic?

Time for some Premier League clubs to start panicking? Probably not, just the price of British players will rise even more dramatically after FIFA voted in favour of limiting the amount of foreign players each team could play in a ‘six-plus-five rule.’

Superb if this could get pushed through and FIFA president Sepp Blatter says he wants it in place by the 2012/13 season but…. European law surely prohibits and limit on the freedom of movement of any nationals within the common market?

Blatter says ‘It’s to make sure that there is better balance in the competitions and not only three or four teams in a league of 18 or 20 are fighting to be the champion and all the others are just there to not be relegated.’ A dig at the Premiership or what??!?!

Adding, ‘As Kevin Keegan recently said: ‘I can only start my season to fight to be fifth or sixth or seventh. It is impossible for me to go into the final four’. At the end of the Champions League in Europe you have in the quarter-finals four teams of the same association; in the semi-finals three of these teams. Then in the final you are surprised that you have two teams of the same association? We want to bring some remedies and this is the six-plus-five rule’s objective.’

The proposal one by 155 votes to five but will never get through according to European law! The commissioner for equal opportunities Vladimir Spidla explained:

‘We are giving the red card to the 6-plus-5 rule.’

Sepp, when asked said: ‘Speaking about is it illegal? For whom? For when? If there is a law, a law can be amended. I have arranged a meeting with the speaker of the European parliament on June 5 in Brussels and if he says then that we should carry on this will prove we’re on the right track.’

Good luck with that, the fat cats in Brussels are far too interested in preserving their own self interests and fleecing tax payers for all they can on expenses!

According to the commission, they would however allow the home grown rule which has often been talked about, which means any team members who have been trained by their club or by another club in the National Association for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 regardless of nationality.

Spidla continued, ‘Compared with the intentions announced by FIFA to impose the so-called ‘6-plus-5 rule’, which is directly discriminatory and therefore incompatible with the EU law, the ‘home-grown players’ rule proposed by UEFA seems to me to be proportionate and to comply with the principle of free movement of workers.’

All hot air probably, would have been more use to vote to bring in goal line technology and red cards for any players chasing after the referee. Discipline and play acting in the game is far more important to stamp out imho!