by ivor_the_injun » Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:18 pm
Just in on bbc.co.uk/sport
Uefa sets foreign player limits
Uefa has announced clubs competing in the Champions League and Uefa Cup will have to include four homegrown players in their 25-man squad from 2006.
Europe's governing body also wants to implement the plan in domestic leagues but that will have to be agreed by each national association.
Uefa then wants six homegrown players by 2007 and eight in 2008.
Of the eight, at least four must be trained by the club's own academy and the rest from the home country.
Uefa defines a club-trained player as one who has been registered for a minimum of three seasons with the club between the age of 15 and 21.
Of the 32 sides in last season's Champions League, five clubs would have not had enough homegrown players.
They are: Arsenal, Chelsea, Celtic, Rangers and Ajax.
Uefa's 52 member associations will vote on whether the same rule should apply to domestic competitions at a Congress in Tallinn, Estonia in April.
There has already been strong opposition voiced by the Premier League and the Italian federation.
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We'll be fine, but I can see teams like Arsenal putting makeweights that wouldn't normally get a look-in in their squads just for the sake of meeting the quotas. There's also the possibility of this artificially inflating transfer fees whenever a team with money expresses an interest in a domestic player. That said, I do think it's - at heart at least - a good move. The worst thing that could happen to football would be for teams to have no links with the local area other than where the stadium lives.