The Premier League have issued a statement that could shake up English football in a post-Brexit world come January.
With the UK set to break free from all EU restrictions as of January 1, many have wondered how this would impact the fortunes of professional clubs.
Boris Johnson promised a new ‘points based immigration system’ as a manifesto pledge in his 2019 election campaign. This wasn’t expected to impact top flight clubs but after the latest press release last night the expectation now is that it will.
Here’s a snippet from the Premier League’s statement released late last night
“The number of overseas U21 players a club can sign will be limited to three in the Jan transfer window and six per season. Clubs will not be able to sign overseas players until they are 18.”:
The Chronicle reported last night that if the proposed quota by the government had been in place in 2014, Ayoze Perez wouldn’t have had the sufficient ‘points’ to join us from Tenerife at the time due to the fact he had no international experience at the time and had been playing in the Spanish second tier.
In the same piece, they also claim that Florian Lejeune would have also not been allowed to come to Tyneside despite playing for La Liga side Eibar – making overseas signings all the more complex moving forward, despite SIX being allowed per season.
Mark Douglas states that regular starters in Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1 and Bundesliga ‘should have no problem’ getting to the 15 points required, with 12 available for simply playing in Europe and additional points available for being a starter.
Rumours earlier in the year were suggesting that the FA were planning to increase the number of English players in a Premier League squad from 8 to 12 – has Brexit handed them the perfect chance to push their agenda?
The balance needs to be right between helping our national side and continuing to have the best league in the world. Not being able to sign overseas players until they are 18 seems harsh and could cause sides to pay fortunes in the long run, handicapping them against other European clubs.
Only being able to sign six foreign nationals in the summer window is unlikely to substantially handicap many sides transfer plans. One argument, however, is that English players will likely become inflated under the rules of the new market. A huge positive is that they would obviously be getting a lot more opportunities to play for Premier League clubs.
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