Blatter has the Right Idea

June 5, 2008

Sepp Blatter, the big daddy of all football, is always the butt of everyone’s jokes. I had the misfortune of listening to him give a speech at a U-21 match in Toronto at BMO Field. To begin his speech he stepped up to the podium, raised his hands to the skies and declared with a bemusing grin, “Football supporters hate….SPEECHEEEES!!” To which everyone responded with guffaws and rolling of eyes. He then proceeded to drone for about ten minutes. I don’t remember what he spoke about.

He is on the right track about one thing though. Either that or one of his secretaries is. His idea to implement a minimum of domestic players in a starting line up is a good one. The problem he is trying to head off is the Premier League in England. If you take the time to look the only country that would be terribly affected by this ruling would be England. It would in fact make clubs and leagues fight harder to keep their locally acquired talent and to work harder in developing what talent they have.

Admittedly there are legel ranglings that don’t really fit with the idea. This could be a boon for the Eredivisie though. With the structures in place the KNVB would be spurred to reach the heights of former years when the youth academies churned out world beaters. Following that the clubs would fight hard to keep them at home thereby perpetuating the youth development. It would be easy to imagine that we would see flavours of football once again emerge. Is it a surprise that Italy plays the same type of football that they did a decade ago? Look at their starting line ups and you’ll see a tremendous influence of domestic players.

I know Blatter is a bit of a joke but he is on the right track here.

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