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To save the national team?


Steve Coppell, born in Liverpool, former man united player, and current Reading manager, has a proposal to create a strong English national team. This graduate from Liverpool University believes we need to introduce quotas on foreign players to nurture home-grown talent. How someone as intelligent and thoughtful as Coppell undoubtedly is can propose this is beyond me. Here’s why:1. The EU doesn’t allow quotas based on nationality (within EU countries admittedly)
2. The influence of talented overseas players improves English players
3. If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best: and if you play against them every week that’s got to be good.
4. As Arsene Wenger said, there were very few overseas players from 1966 up until the 1990s but England didn’t win anything.

I think Steve is just making a case for himself for English manager when the national team fails to qualify and McClaren leaves…

Author
grell

I was born and brought up near Chester in the north west of England. I have always loved playing and talking about sport, especially football!
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4 comments
  • The players are too soft. Since when did a dead leg mean a player misses 4 games? thigh strain? a month. Bert Trautman played on with a broken neck in a match in the 50s! Get a grip and allow the young fit over paid players to PLAY. Don’t ban foreigners, ban poncing about!

  • England have been poor for the most part of this millennium because the players themselves have an inflated feeling of entitlement. This has been brought about by inflated prices for English players (16 million for Darren Bent? John Terry’s 10 year price-parity deal at Chelsea??), moderate success in Europe by English teams (Gerrard and Lampard both CL “stars” so they must be able to play together), and the cosy relationship between the players and the last two managers (witness the rise of the WAGs and the stagnant unchanging line-up of the first choice XI).

    I think a quota system would only make this situation worse as the value of half-decent English players would rise even more out of proportion of their real worth, and the quality of the league as a whole would go down as a consequence.

    A better idea would be to put a price-cap on English players and then you’d see a lot more premiership managers turning to them rather than cheaper foreign imports. It could lead to there being more English players fighting for a place in the national team, with the added bonus that our top stars would be too busy to find the time to write an autobiography, or “merk” their teammates.

  • Now that preening prima donna, Gerrard, has jumped on he bandwagon for quotas.

    “If something isn’t done, there will be more and more foreigners and they will take over and that is worrying.”

    Who is he, Norman Tebbit? He’s just worried that he might be substituted permanently by Lucas.

  • FOG IN THE CHANNEL, EUROPE CUT OFF

    it’s a well known fact that our brothers across the border in Europe play an effeminate form of the beautiful game. Ballet lessons are de rigour in their training camps where they learn how best o fall convincingly to kid our honest home grown refs with their wiley ways. It was the Euro influence that introduced more than one substitute and the dull percentage game of the rotation system. Safe and dull. Villa won the European Cup with a squad of just 14. And they won the league to get there. no resting, no macro biotic diets, no qualifying for the so called “champions league” by coming fourth!! the shame. A team that qualifies for the “champions league” coming fourth shouldn’t be able to look themselves in the mirror. Villa had a smattering of foreigners all right. Some of their players weren’t from Birmingham. Notts Forest the same.
    Coppell for England. Arsene go home.

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