EPL, Premiership, English Premier League

The number of players of English nationality is at a new low in the EPL:

2000/2001 season: 207
2001/2002 season: 199
2002/2003 season: 179
2003/2004 season: 182
2004/2005 season: 184
2005/2006 season: 186
2006/2007 season: 191
2007/2008 season: 170

Out of 498 players only 170 were English in the EPL, or about 34.1%. “The number is important because that’s what I can choose from” said Fabio Capello (the English National Coach). “The work being done in the academies is very important. We probably have to change the system of training for young players. At Under-21, and younger national teams, we have a lot of good players. For the future, I hope next season is not 34% but 40%. It will be better for me and England football.”

However, he states that “more importantly the quality - the level of the player. At the moment the total is 34% but the (quality) level is high.” This does make some sense when you think about the Champions League where Chelsea and Manchester United (both EPL teams) had 10 English starters out of 22 players. Sepp Blatter (President of the world football’s governing body Fifa) suggested that EPLE club teams restrict the number of foreign starting players to 5. This would hypothetically improve the number of quality English players. This would also of course, completely destroy the EPL and we would see a drastic drop in viewership and the amount gross earnings; every Club team would resist this move. Despite the obstacles, he continues to press his agenda.

Teams such as Arsenal with only 0.34% English players per match would have to completely change their teams.

West Ham: 6.61%
Aston Villa: 6.42%
Middlesbrough: 5.26%
Wigan: 4.92%
Everton: 4.89%
Derby: 4.86%
Newcastle: 4.76%
Tottenham: 4.37%
Man Utd: 4.28%
Bolton: 4.24%
Sunderland: 4.11%
Portsmouth: 3.79%
Birmingham: 3.74%
Reading: 3.68%
Chelsea: 3.63%
Manchester City: 3.42%
Blackburn: 2.68%
Fulham: 2.42%
Liverpool: 2.34%
Arsenal: 0.34%

In response however, the Premier League released a statement: “Merely looking at numbers of England players in the Premier League is a blunt and misleading measure as to how well the national team should be doing. After all, in the 70s and 80s the vast majority of players in the top flight were eligible for England yet we routinely struggled to qualify for tournaments, let alone perform in them. Our figures show this season nearly 40% of the starting XIs were qualified to play for England, 10 of whom played in the Champions League Final, arguably the highest standard of football in the world. There is no shortage of players at the highest level to pick from but we all want to see more Englishmen capable of performing at this level.”

“That is why Premier League clubs invest more than £40m a season in youth development, that is why the Premier League, along with the FA and the Football League, are driving through reforms to ensure the quality of coaching and player development is of the highest standard. We must raise standards, not implement something that will never happen under European law and would only create a broader pool of average players rather than a deeper one of the right level of talent for Premier League clubs and England.”

However, we can also compare other European nations’ Club Leagues:

Italian Serie A: had 7.3 Italians per team
Spanish La Liga A: had 6.9 Spaniards per team
German Bundesliga: had 4.9 Germans per team