When Serie A celebrated its first Juventus-Internazionale match for some 18 months a fortnight ago, the so-called derby d’Italia produced something less than a classic. It was cagey but had some suspense, with a late equaliser for newly promoted Juve.
Inter, the champions, maintained their position at the top of the table with the 1-1 draw and the 90 minutes left the president of Fifa disgusted. For Sepp Blatter, the derby d’Italia had been too conspicuously unItalian. “That match,” declared Blatter, “had something unacceptable about it and was a clear example of the excessive use of players who come from outside the country the competition is actually taking place in.”
Inter are getting used to hearing such noises. Like the Premier League leaders, Arsenal, the team at the top of the Italian first division regularly field an XI without an Italian among them, their goals generally provided by a Swede or an Argentinian and occasionally a Brazilian, their midfield muscle by a Frenchman, their defence organised by various South Americans. In the land of the world champions, its own champions are almost as foreign as can be. Inter provided a single member of the triumphant Italian 2006 World Cup squad – Marco Materazzi, currently injured – and though they then eagerly signed the Italy full-back, Fabio Grosso, he would find no regular place in his new club side.
Well, what did he expect joining a club called Internazionale? “Institutions transcend the people who are in them,” reckons the articulate Inter midfield player Santiago Solari, an Argentinian, “and Italian football will continue to have its own stamp independent of who is lining up for its clubs. Today many of the bigger European clubs are in the hands of foreign investors, like Manchester United or Chelsea. Capital doesn’t have a nationality and talent doesn’t recognise borders. Chanel hasn’t stopped being the emblem of French chic just because its chief designer for the past decade happens to be a German.”
Foreign excellence, Inter would argue, has always been part of their identity and indeed part of Serie A’s, save for the period in the 1970s when a ban on outsiders was imposed on Italy’s clubs. By the end of the following decade it was the most sought-after destination for the world’s finest migrating footballers. Now it would have to acknowledge that the Premier League is the place where foreign players flock in highest numbers: more than 55% of employees at England’s top 20 clubs are from outside England. Fifa would like a formula imposed that sees clubs fielding a minimum of six players per XI eligible for the country they are working in, and has just commissioned a report on the impact of foreign players in the major European leagues. Plenty of evidence was found to support the idea that youth systems were failing and thus Fifa’s most prized territory, international – as in country versus country – football was in danger of being undermined. Or at least it was in Europe. It would be hard to argue that the national team of the Ivory Coast are not stronger for having Didier Drogba at Chelsea, Emmanuel Eboue and Kolo Toure at Arsenal and Yaya Toure at Barcelona than they would be if these players were turning out for ASEC Abidjan or Africa Sports each weekend, or that Ronaldinho or Kaka have not raised their value for Brazil by winning the Champions League with Barcelona and Milan.
At the same time, the difference in standards being set by clubs from Italy, England and Spain in European club competitions and by their own national teams yawns. Italian, Spanish and English clubs occupy the top three positions in Uefa’s club football hierarchy and dominate the Champions League; the England, Spain, and Italy teams all entered this week’s final qualifying rounds for Euro 2008 in danger of elimination, having watched countries such as Greece and Romania, whose clubs are far from heavyweights, cruise through to the finals.
According to the Fifa-commissioned report, carried out by the Centre for Sports Studies at Franche-Comte university, fewer than one quarter of players across the five leading leagues of Europe – the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Serie A, the German Bundesliga and the French Championnat – are products of club academies. Not even all of those would necessarily be what Blatter calls “selectable” for the country they work in, because recruitment, even at teenage level, has become globalised.
Barcelona, who have one of the most productive youth development structures, find their prize students from the class of juniors born between 1988 and 1989 are a Mexican-Brazilian, Giovani Dos Santos, and an Argentinian, Lionel Messi. Little wonder Spain found their native resources so thin in some positions that they took a naturalised Brazilian, Marcos Senna, and an Argentinian, Mariano Pernia, to the last World Cup in their squad.
Spain, where the national team inspire a peculiar mix of fatalism and downright antipathy in some regions, has many people agitated about what the foreign influx means for the soul of their clubs. For the first time in their history, Atletico Madrid have no madrileos on their roster, and Atleti have started the season rather well.
Now look at the club in Europe with perhaps the most fierce commitment to its locale: Athletic Bilbao. Athletic, one of the three longest-serving teams in the top flight of La Liga, follow a policy of only picking Basque players, not exactly enshrined in their statutes – lest it be scrutinised too closely as discriminatory – but nonetheless true: to play for Athletic you have to have been born or grown up in the Basque country.
This used to be quite a successful formula. The club drew crowds with a profound sort of local allegiance and, at one time, this sort of strong regionalism produced results. Real Sociedad, of San Sebastian, also in the Basque country, had a similar policy, now abandoned, and between them, Real and Athletic won four successive Spanish leagues in the early 1980s.
Then the law of the market took over, the Bosman ruling accelerated the movement of players and Athletic, runners-up in La Liga in 1998, found that not only were the Barcelonas and Real Madrids but the Osasunas and Deportivo la Corunas, too, were shopping around in South America and Africa, while they were looking for footballers from a Basque population of barely two million, and sooner or later being obliged to sell any stars they produced. Athletic, the sole senior club from Spain’s fifth biggest city, have finished in the top five of La Liga only once in the past nine years. Last season, they escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth.
Over in Belgium, meanwhile, Beveren were relegated from the top flight, only three years after reaching the Belgian Cup final in what remains one of the most striking examples of importing foreign footballers en masse. Beveren had 10 Ivorians in their lineup for some of their cup run, dividend of an agreement they had with ASEC in the West African country.
They sold many of their better Ivorians and, without this concentrated stream of overseas talent, began to slide. They now have as many Belgians as foreigners, which is good enough to place them . . . ninth in the second division.
The legal position: Fifa’s Sepp Blatter has said that he will lobby the EU to “stop the overwhelming presence of nonnational players in club leagues”. But the EU pointed out that a quota of up to fi ve foreigners per team, as Blatter suggested, would not be “compatible with the fundamental freedom of movement rights that exist in the European Union”, which allows citizens to take up employment in other member countries. Blatter will now have to seek a change in EU law that would exempt footballers
By Ian Hawkey
Inter, the champions, maintained their position at the top of the table with the 1-1 draw and the 90 minutes left the president of Fifa disgusted. For Sepp Blatter, the derby d’Italia had been too conspicuously unItalian. “That match,” declared Blatter, “had something unacceptable about it and was a clear example of the excessive use of players who come from outside the country the competition is actually taking place in.”
Inter are getting used to hearing such noises. Like the Premier League leaders, Arsenal, the team at the top of the Italian first division regularly field an XI without an Italian among them, their goals generally provided by a Swede or an Argentinian and occasionally a Brazilian, their midfield muscle by a Frenchman, their defence organised by various South Americans. In the land of the world champions, its own champions are almost as foreign as can be. Inter provided a single member of the triumphant Italian 2006 World Cup squad – Marco Materazzi, currently injured – and though they then eagerly signed the Italy full-back, Fabio Grosso, he would find no regular place in his new club side.
Well, what did he expect joining a club called Internazionale? “Institutions transcend the people who are in them,” reckons the articulate Inter midfield player Santiago Solari, an Argentinian, “and Italian football will continue to have its own stamp independent of who is lining up for its clubs. Today many of the bigger European clubs are in the hands of foreign investors, like Manchester United or Chelsea. Capital doesn’t have a nationality and talent doesn’t recognise borders. Chanel hasn’t stopped being the emblem of French chic just because its chief designer for the past decade happens to be a German.”
Foreign excellence, Inter would argue, has always been part of their identity and indeed part of Serie A’s, save for the period in the 1970s when a ban on outsiders was imposed on Italy’s clubs. By the end of the following decade it was the most sought-after destination for the world’s finest migrating footballers. Now it would have to acknowledge that the Premier League is the place where foreign players flock in highest numbers: more than 55% of employees at England’s top 20 clubs are from outside England. Fifa would like a formula imposed that sees clubs fielding a minimum of six players per XI eligible for the country they are working in, and has just commissioned a report on the impact of foreign players in the major European leagues. Plenty of evidence was found to support the idea that youth systems were failing and thus Fifa’s most prized territory, international – as in country versus country – football was in danger of being undermined. Or at least it was in Europe. It would be hard to argue that the national team of the Ivory Coast are not stronger for having Didier Drogba at Chelsea, Emmanuel Eboue and Kolo Toure at Arsenal and Yaya Toure at Barcelona than they would be if these players were turning out for ASEC Abidjan or Africa Sports each weekend, or that Ronaldinho or Kaka have not raised their value for Brazil by winning the Champions League with Barcelona and Milan.
At the same time, the difference in standards being set by clubs from Italy, England and Spain in European club competitions and by their own national teams yawns. Italian, Spanish and English clubs occupy the top three positions in Uefa’s club football hierarchy and dominate the Champions League; the England, Spain, and Italy teams all entered this week’s final qualifying rounds for Euro 2008 in danger of elimination, having watched countries such as Greece and Romania, whose clubs are far from heavyweights, cruise through to the finals.
According to the Fifa-commissioned report, carried out by the Centre for Sports Studies at Franche-Comte university, fewer than one quarter of players across the five leading leagues of Europe – the Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Serie A, the German Bundesliga and the French Championnat – are products of club academies. Not even all of those would necessarily be what Blatter calls “selectable” for the country they work in, because recruitment, even at teenage level, has become globalised.
Barcelona, who have one of the most productive youth development structures, find their prize students from the class of juniors born between 1988 and 1989 are a Mexican-Brazilian, Giovani Dos Santos, and an Argentinian, Lionel Messi. Little wonder Spain found their native resources so thin in some positions that they took a naturalised Brazilian, Marcos Senna, and an Argentinian, Mariano Pernia, to the last World Cup in their squad.
Spain, where the national team inspire a peculiar mix of fatalism and downright antipathy in some regions, has many people agitated about what the foreign influx means for the soul of their clubs. For the first time in their history, Atletico Madrid have no madrileos on their roster, and Atleti have started the season rather well.
Now look at the club in Europe with perhaps the most fierce commitment to its locale: Athletic Bilbao. Athletic, one of the three longest-serving teams in the top flight of La Liga, follow a policy of only picking Basque players, not exactly enshrined in their statutes – lest it be scrutinised too closely as discriminatory – but nonetheless true: to play for Athletic you have to have been born or grown up in the Basque country.
This used to be quite a successful formula. The club drew crowds with a profound sort of local allegiance and, at one time, this sort of strong regionalism produced results. Real Sociedad, of San Sebastian, also in the Basque country, had a similar policy, now abandoned, and between them, Real and Athletic won four successive Spanish leagues in the early 1980s.
Then the law of the market took over, the Bosman ruling accelerated the movement of players and Athletic, runners-up in La Liga in 1998, found that not only were the Barcelonas and Real Madrids but the Osasunas and Deportivo la Corunas, too, were shopping around in South America and Africa, while they were looking for footballers from a Basque population of barely two million, and sooner or later being obliged to sell any stars they produced. Athletic, the sole senior club from Spain’s fifth biggest city, have finished in the top five of La Liga only once in the past nine years. Last season, they escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth.
Over in Belgium, meanwhile, Beveren were relegated from the top flight, only three years after reaching the Belgian Cup final in what remains one of the most striking examples of importing foreign footballers en masse. Beveren had 10 Ivorians in their lineup for some of their cup run, dividend of an agreement they had with ASEC in the West African country.
They sold many of their better Ivorians and, without this concentrated stream of overseas talent, began to slide. They now have as many Belgians as foreigners, which is good enough to place them . . . ninth in the second division.
The legal position: Fifa’s Sepp Blatter has said that he will lobby the EU to “stop the overwhelming presence of nonnational players in club leagues”. But the EU pointed out that a quota of up to fi ve foreigners per team, as Blatter suggested, would not be “compatible with the fundamental freedom of movement rights that exist in the European Union”, which allows citizens to take up employment in other member countries. Blatter will now have to seek a change in EU law that would exempt footballers
By Ian Hawkey
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