11:48am Sunday 23rd March 2008
By Blake Richardson
This is the first year four teams from the same country have qualified for the last eight of the Champions League.
But is this really an achievement for English football?
Just how ‘English’ are these teams? The stadiums are on English soil and, historically, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea have all done English football proud in
Europe.
But the Premier League’s big four are decidedly un-English when it comes to the players, the managers and even the owners.
Should the nation’s neutral football purists really be cheering for easy-on-the-eye Arsenal to win the Champions League when there is only one Englishman who regularly gets a game?
There are some frightening statistics on the foreign invasion of professional footballers into the Premier League.
Our top flight has the largest number of foreign players in Europe at 55.4 per cent and rising, Germany has 44.8 per cent and then comes Spain (34.3), France (32.2) and Italy (28.9).
Is it any coincidence that, of the big footballing nations, Italy has the highest proportion of native pros in their top flight and are the current world champions, while France, the World Cup
runners-up, are only just behind them in the league table?
They put home-grown talent ahead of foreign imports and the national teams are flourishing.
In the 15 years of the Premier League, the number of foreign players has increased from 24 to 311.
And there are no better examples to illustrate the foreign takeover of our game than the ‘big four’.
Sir Alex Ferguson is right to say Arsenal are the team that benefits most from foreign players.
In a typical weekend in the Premier League, you will not find a single Englishman in the Arsenal starting XI, with Theo Walcott usually sat warming the bench.
Manchester United can expect to field Rio Ferdinand, Wes Brown, Gary Neville, Michael Carrick, Owen Hargreaves and Wayne Rooney; Chelsea have Ashley Cole, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Shaun
Wright-Phillips and Wayne Bridge; Liverpool consistently have Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Peter Crouch in their line-up.
So on the numbers game basis, shouldn’t the neutral fan be cheering on Chelsea or Manchester United to European glory this year?
But then Chelsea are owned by a Russian billionaire and managed by an Israeli, while United’s owners are a posh family from the United States. Now I’m totally confused as to where my
allegiance should lie. Come on Barcelona!
Seriously though, where will it all end.
If the Football Association feels the fans are content with the influx of a foreign power base then I predict we will soon be finding non-nationals in the England team.
We have already had a Swedish manager and currently have an Italian in charge.
Can you imagine an English manager of the Italian national side? There is more chance of sausage and mash replacing pasta and pizza as their national dish.
Perhaps the FA will soon follow the lead of the Rugby Football Union and the Rugby Football League in choosing foreign players based on residency rules.
England RU coach Brian Ashton said of Lesley Vainikolo’s selection for the Six Nations campaign: “He has done his 36 months (residency) comfortably, and he has been here six years. From
an eligibility point of view we are very happy.”
St Helens man-mountain Maurie Fa’asavalu has the distinction of being the first-ever non-British player to pull on the red, white and blue shirt of the GB rugby league team.
He too qualified on residency grounds, despite having played for Samoa in the rugby union World Cup.
Give it a few years and England (if the national side are still struggling) could well follow suit.
We could be the new Republic of Ireland. Remember their squad at the 1994 World Cup finals in the USA.
Of the team that lost to Holland in the second round, the following players were non-Irish: Paul McGrath (born London), Andy Townsend (skipper, Maidstone), Ray Houghton (Glasgow), John Aldridge
(Liverpool), Jason McAteer (Liverpool), Phil Babb (London), Tony Cascarino (Italy).
Hey, don’t laugh and say the buffoons at the FA would never go down that road. They appointed Steve McClaren didn’t they?
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