Brexit and Football

[Stavros]

Looks like a score draw for the elites, a home and away loss for the rest.

From The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/football...-the-new-rules

From 1 January English football will change. European citizens will need a visa to work in the country. The criteria determining who qualifies have been the subject of lengthy negotiations between the Football Association, Premier League and EFL. They were finally agreed at the beginning of December, which means clubs have had just a month to get to know the new rules and fully implement them. Which is more than many industries can say.
In the short term

The new rules will have two immediate consequences: the first, that players from the EU hoping to move to England will be treated in the same way as players from the rest of the world; the second, that those EU players will have no problem getting in, as long as their CVs are impressive enough.
That’s not to say calculating the quality of a player’s career to date is not complicated. Lawyers are going to get a lot of work. In essence, however, the Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) which is awarded by the FA and enables players, managers, coaches and other staff to qualify for work visas is about points. Those points are awarded according to where you have played previously, for how long and at what kind of level. Qualify for 15 of them and, in the men’s game, you’re in.
If you want to buy Karim Benzema, can afford him, and can persuade him the UK is better than Madrid, it is going to be easy. In fact, a player over the age of 21 from a country ranked within Fifa’s top 50, who has played 70% of their country’s matches over the previous 24 months will automatically get a GBE.
Similarly, if you play for a club in a band 1 league (the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1) and appear on a teamsheet just the once, that is 12 points. Sit on the bench for a single Champions League group game and that is five more (should your club reach the final, those five points become 10, without you even having to be selected again).
Those topline figures send a clear signal: this settlement is designed to help English football continue to sign European names after Brexit.
It is when you go lower down the bands that things get trickier. Take Greece. The 2004 European champions are ranked 53rd in the world by Fifa, meaning a player could be ever-present as an international for two years but still earn only two points towards a GBE. The Greek Superliga is a band 4 competition. That means you get six points for being selected for a match in the past year and a maximum of six points more based on your appearance record. That means you are one short of qualifying for a GBE if you don’t play in Europe.
Apply the same situation to a Lithuanian in the Norwegian League and the chances of reaching 15 points are as slim as Brann winning the Champions League (which would get you 10 points).
So, on the surface, the new rules appear to meet the original objectives of the FA and the Premier League. The FA will get fewer imports of ordinary players, leaving room for neglected English talent to develop. The Premier League will still be able to bring in big names and, indeed, it is hard to find many examples of top-flight players who would have seen their transfers cancelled under the new regulations.
It is likely, though, that clubs in the EFL will feel an effect and particularly those in the Championship, such as Brentford or Norwich City, who have built models around acquiring talented players from obscure places. Bryan Mbeumo, the Brentford forward who is one of the best players in the Championship, came from the French second division with only limited first-team appearances and youth international caps. He would not have got a permit, as would have been the case with the Norwich striker Teemu Pukki as Finland fall outside the Fifa top 50 and his former club, Brøndby, compete in the Danish league, a band 5 competition.

The qualifying criteria for managers are simpler than those for players: 24 months consecutively or 36 months over the past five years working in any competition from band 1 to band 5. You also need a Uefa Pro licence and proof your English is good enough to, among other things, “describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans”. There is some debate as to whether Marcelo Bielsa would meet these criteria and Watford’s new Spanish head coach, Xisco Muñoz, whose previous job was with Dinamo Tbilisi, would certainly not.
Finally there are the staff and the days of an overseas manager turning up with all of his mates may be numbered. Any individual looking for a visa as a “Performance Manager” (which covers most coaching and sports science-related roles) requires a degree and five years’ experience in bands 1 to 5 or at international level.
All of the above refers to conditions imposed on the men’s game, but women’s teams will also need to apply for GBEs for new players and the points needed for qualification are even higher, with 24 the minimum. In terms of how points are awarded, there is an even greater emphasis on playing in top-tier competitions and for high-ranking nations. There are also no criteria for players under 21. It will be very difficult to sign a non-international from outside the world’s top eight leagues.

[sidney111]

Might do the England team some good

[Stavros]

A fair point, if more young footballers of UK origin do come through the various channels. At the moment the UK has a fine crop of young players, and many English. There was a time when there was almost a production line of Scottish players who, making their name for Celtic, Rangers or Aberdeen would then make the move south, to Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal -not sure what has happened to Scottish football since the 1980s.

[sidney111]

Scottish football is strange, I know they got left behind in the income from tv money, but to me that should mean more home grown Scottish players coming through to the teams, simply because of lack of money to import young talent.