Examination of Witnesses (Questions 39
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2000
MR G TAYLOR,
MR G CROOKS,
MS J COLLINS
AND MR
J BARNWELL
Chairman
39. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much
indeed for coming to see us this afternoon and also for the very
interesting evidence which you have already submitted to us in
written form. If I might just indulge myself for a moment, I notice
that you, John Barnwell, started your career with the Bishop Auckland
Football Club.
(Mr Barnwell) Yes, I did.
40. Despite that you survived to tell the tale.
(Mr Barnwell) I did.
41. You are all very welcome indeed. I shall
begin, if I may, by asking two general questions which will give
you each a chance to make a few introductory remarks if you are
so inclined. Is that all right? How would you characterise the
contribution of overseas players to the development of football
in Great Britain? What has been the effect of the Bosman
ruling on British and European football?
(Mr Crooks) May I pick up that particular pass and
run with it? Some may remember that many years ago I spent some
time with Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and had the great privilege
and pleasure of playing with two foreign players, Ricardo Villa
and Osvaldo Ardiles. One of the attractions for me, in going to
the club, was the fact that they were genuine world-class players.
That is where I would place the emphasis: genuine world-class
players. The contribution they made to the club and the players
who played in that club was that they helped their development
in a number of ways. They had a very, very positive impact on
the morale and the footballing standard of that club. The problem
which has developed from this issue, the question you have put
forward, is that there have been many cases—and my colleagues
might be inclined to cite some of those cases—where the
foreign players arriving have not been as good as the players
we have at our disposal. That in itself has caused tremendous
problems. To the general question I would say that the Institute
of Professional Sport, and indeed my colleague, would have no
problem at all with players who come from Europe or further afield
who are of genuine world-class quality or indeed better than we
have because we benefit and there is no question about that when
they are world-class. The problem arises when they are not as
good. There are clear cases where that has been the case. As far
as the Bosman question is concerned, I should like to pass
that to my colleague Gordon Taylor, who, as you well know, is
the Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers' Association,
who, I think it is fair to say, majors on the subject.
(Mr Taylor) First of all thank you for giving us the
opportunity to speak about what is a very sensitive issue, representing
the workforce in professional football as I do in England and
Wales; some 4,000 members, 3,000 full-time professionals and significantly
we have more youngsters—1,000—(now called football
scholars) from the age of 16 to 19 than any other country in the
world, as indeed we have more full-time professional players.
We have the most full-time professional clubs in the world and
have the highest aggregate attendances and that is one of the
reasons why I believe at international level we have not been
reflecting that structure, particularly when you bear in mind
of course that it was long established that the majority of players
in our country were from the United Kingdom and the Republic of
Ireland. The work permit criteria and control began in 1978 after
the World Cup in Argentina. We were concerned then that it should
be exactly that: quality control. I do believe it is the job of
Government, and I hope you would agree with me, to keep a hand
on the tiller and try to make sure that we do have quality control
in all professions. It is a very sensitive subject when you talk
about foreign players but we have a very strong anti-racism programme
as a trade union, which we are very proud of. We have successfully
assimilated many Afro-Caribbean players and we intend to assimilate
many Asian players from our ethnic minorities. You can be accused
of being racist, you can be accused of being xenophobic, you can
be accused of being protectionist. I really do believe our first
priority as a country should be to try to create jobs and opportunity
for our own youngsters. Football is cosmopolitan inasmuch as it
is a meritocracy. Garth has mentioned two top quality players
from Argentina and it is significant that when we were at war
with the Argentine in the Falklands War, the response from the
football players to those two Argentinians was one of sympathy
and understanding, not a bit like some of the Tabloid papers.
The older members may well recall in the Second World War a very
famous German prisoner of war, Bert Trautmann, was made very welcome
and made a big contribution to Manchester City. We are about that
business of integrating but making sure that we do not lose sight
of the need to bring on our own youngsters. From that point of
view, out of the 4,000 players I have mentioned, of approximately
1,000 to 1,100 youth trainees coming to the game at 16, three
out of four are out of the game by the time they are 21. Of the
professional workforce at the end of the season 400 to 500 players
will be released with nowhere to go. When we talk about the contribution
of foreign players, nobody could deny the quality of Ardiles,
European Union nationals like Cantona, like Schmeichel, like Zola.
But the fact is that we now have more non-English players in our
Premier League than any other country in the world. We have an
imbalance of payments over the last three years: £400 million
has gone abroad and hardly been reciprocated. At the same time,
conscious of the need to develop our own young players and look
for the next Michael Owen, David Beckham, because they are there,
we are spending millions on improving our coaching. I am very
conscious that Government is also spending taxpayers' money on
looking to stage the World Cup in 2006, some £10 million
in total. We would want teams to do us justice in the same way
that we look with admiration, particularly in cricket and other
sports, at Australia where they particularly look to encourage
their own talent to come through. You see as well, when France
wins the World Cup, the way that it lifts morale in the sporting
nation and does encourage all members of that community to come
together. In reality there are two aspects of it. We have never
been opposed to top quality foreign labour. That is for EU and
non-EU. I think we should emphasise that they should be established
international players, they should be of a certain age (above
21) because there are so many youngsters coming now from abroad
who are being displaced, walking the streets of Europe unemployed
and that will include England, that we need to be careful on that.
They should be established, they should be of an ability better
than is available here, in the same way you would expect any other
profession to say yes, if they can enhance our profession, but
not if they are no better, because they are then merely displacing
labour and obstructing the development of our own young talent.
That is why we feel we must concentrate on those particular points
of the work permit criteria. They should be established, they
should be better, they should not be seen to be displacing our
own workforce. In reality we have well over 300 foreign players,
irrespective of non-EU or EU, and when we did a head count the
Christmas before last, in the 1998-99 season, we found that over
half those players were not starting in first team games. We found
that with this money going abroad managers are looking for quick
fix teams encouraged by a network of agents with the result that
they are not looking lower down the divisions where in the past
they would find a Peter Beardsley from Carlisle, a Kevin Keegan
from Scunthorpe for example. That pattern is now changing which
is also affecting the viability of those lower division clubs,
because we do have another 72 clubs outside the Premier League
and in fact over half of the watching football population of 20
million a year watches games in those leagues. We feel we must
emphasise quality on the work permit situation. We have been very
disappointed that that quality control which we felt was a Government
task has been eroded. It is no disrespect to say that I find politicians
get put under great pressure by your local clubs because you will
often watch them, it is attractive to be there, you are men and
ladies of the people. They will say to you that it is fashionable
now to get a foreign player, they know he does not meet the work
permit criteria but they would like you to knock on the door of
the Department for Education and Employment to get this through.
I can understand it but it really sticks in my throat because
I know if it were cheap foreign labour for other professions displacing
the workforce in one of your local factories you would all be
marching at the front of the queue. Because it is football it
is looked on differently. That is why I would want to stress nobody
has ever been against quality, nobody has been against the contribution
which some of the players I have mentioned make; in fact the players
themselves have voted for Eric Cantona as their player of the
year, David Ginola as their player of the year. I know you may
well say that now there is the Bosman judgment, what can
you do about it? Bosman was really primarily about a very
poor system in Belgium which was dating back before we went to
court in 1963 with George Eastham, and Bosman's club in Belgium
could offer him less money and keep him there until they got the
transfer fee they wanted. It was incidental that he wanted to
go to a French club and they could not afford to pay what was
a fixed price between countries set by UEFA. As a result Article
48 of the Treaty of Rome was invoked, which says there must be
no restriction on foreign movement between EU countries. That
of course has exacerbated the problem and legally you will say
we cannot do anything about that. It is apparent in countries
like England, Germany, Italy and Spain, where there is very great
concern that in their under-21 international teams they cannot
find a player who is playing in a first team. They are quite as
concerned as we are to try to achieve some balance and proportionality.
That is why I am encouraged that the new European Commissioner
for Sport has been in talks with FIFA and UEFA and the International
Players' Association to try to see whether we can achieve some
balance in teams whereby a percentage of players in the team,
say five or six, must have come through the development programme
in that country, irrespective of nationality, to try to ensure
social and moral welfare, to try to have some protection on moves
for youngsters under the age of 21, to try to keep them in the
country where they are developed, where they have been nurtured.
What we are finding is that so many youngsters now are coming
from countries such as Africa and South America, not making the
grade and then being unemployed and that is a real social problem.
The response of the Commissioner has been an encouraging factor.
Basically those are the two responses I would want to make initially
but I am pleased I could get them off my chest. Thank you.
(Ms Collins) I am not as qualified as my colleagues
to speak about football, I did not play at Bishop Auckland. I
am heavily involved in ice hockey, one of the smaller professional
sports. Listening to everything Mr Taylor said, most if not all
of what he said applies equally to a sport like ice hockey. I
am equally not a very good skater as the players will tell you;
I am what is known as an ankle bender. The effect for instance
of foreign players in ice hockey is very much the same as football.
Nobody objects to the quality players being brought in, but what
we are seeing, as you are in football, is a quantity of an ordinary
standard rather than quality. Just to give you a slightly clearer
picture of how much work permit players affect ice hockey in this
country I can give you some figures. There are approximately 160
full-time professional positions with the Super League clubs today;
53 of those are on work permits. We have only 10 British born
trained players playing in the Super League. It is a bit of an
anorak's question to name all 10 of them at the moment. There
are probably another 20 Canadians who qualify to play for the
national team and the other 80-odd are EU qualified players, usually
Canadians with some kind of dispensation from work permits. The
effect is very dramatic, very enormous. Unlike football, our Super
League clubs are freestanding professional organisations. They
frequently do not own the arena they play out of—Manchester
or Sheffield or Bracknell—and they do not have established
junior programmes. It is far easier at the moment under the present
work permit criteria to cherrypick other established orchards
as it were than to grow your own. While the criteria say that,
it is in ice hockey, which is a comparatively low standard of
qualification inasmuch as players can come here from the equivalent
professional leagues in North America to, say, our third division,
that will continue. At the moment there is no incentive, no encouragement
under the present system for professional clubs in ice hockey
in this country to develop our own junior players and then bring
them on to senior status. I am very concerned about that because
it is just a kind of perpetuating nothingness where the clubs
are attempting to build a pyramid from the top downwards, unlike
the Egyptians who learned very quickly that when you build a pyramid
you lay a solid foundation. I share the concerns of my colleagues
about the Department's, I suppose, attitude towards encouraging
junior development. My players have voted every year to raise
the standard of qualification to something nearer to professional
football where players have to be internationally established
players of a quality far superior to anything you can get here
to get in with a work permit. That is simply not the case at the
moment. They are my concerns. As for Bosman, of course
Bosman did not just affect football. It is a bit of a media
myth that Bosman was all about football and it did not
affect anybody else. It certainly did. There are huge numbers
of players across northern Europe, particularly Finland, Sweden,
Russia, etcetera and of course Canadians with EU dispensation,
who do not need work permits. The effect of that, as has already
been pointed out by the figures I have given you, impacted hugely
on the professional game here.
(Mr Barnwell) Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I shall be very clear: although I played for Bishop Auckland,
I am now here in a position which I never expected to be. I represent
the 92 practising managers and associate members. I say that because
we have to be very careful here that we are not just talking about
the Premiership, we are talking about football in general, because
it does impact right the way through the league, which is having
a negative effect through Bosman and through the great
importation of foreign players. Mr Crooks mentioned Ardiles and
Villa who were of great quality, which I personally know because
Villa scored two very important goals—and Garth played in
that—in an FA Cup semi-final when I was manager at Wolves
and they dismissed us out of the door. I say that not for any
personal reason but to flag up the quality of those players. They
were in the minority and they were very good players, very, very
good players and they enhanced the game; there is no doubt about
it. Since Bosman is also flagged up, we have had the Bergkamps
and Zolas who have definitely enhanced the game. Anybody who says
they have not is not looking at it through correct eyes. What
has happened in football terms—and I speak from the managers'
role as Mr Taylor is speaking from the players' role—is
that the job is not easy, obviously, having had over 150 managers
dismissed in the last three years, the job is not easy, the aim
of the manager is very simple, it is to accumulate better players.
Therefore he will use any means at his disposal to accumulate
those players to keep himself in a job. It is the short-termism
of clubs, particularly at the top end of the market, where they
have the money to go into the market if the facility is there
which allows them to raid that market. If they have more money,
they will spend it. You give a football club £1 million;
it will spend £1.5 million to the detriment of the whole
of the game. It is not the chairman's responsibility to provide
players for the national team. It is the chairman and manager's
responsibility to have a successful club side. If your club wins
that league and is full of foreign players, your supporters will
not mind. That is the short-termism. It is the selfishness of
football. We almost have to protect ourselves against ourselves.
I think that is the major issue: club versus country. My colleagues
here have expressed very clearly some very lucid remarks which
I shall not enlarge on. I just feel that at the start of this
season in the Premiership, 59 per cent of the players who started
were foreigners and that is a massive number. If we are not careful,
to put in an analogy which you might think is not the same, cricket
had two overseas players not so long ago and where did you go
to get those players? What kind of player did you go for? You
went for a fast bowler and you went for an opening batsman. Where
are our fast bowlers and opening batsmen now? How many professional
cricketers are there? Not a lot. Very, very few. I am not saying
that is the road we are going down, because there is not enough
history in it yet. There is definitely not enough history and
people can point and say you are crying wolf. We are spending
£3.5 million a year on developing young players in the academies,
Government is putting money into grassroots football, but is there
going to be a vehicle at the end of it to develop these players?
It is all right saying the best players will come to the surface.
In any job you need the experience and football magnifies that.
You need experience and if you are not going to get exposed as
a youngster to that experience you might never, never appear.
You might be a Michael Owen, but you might be two stages removed
and if you are not exposed to it you will never get there. The
system is not right. The system for foreign imports was initially
correct, the good players were in the minority, the reverse has
happened. The good players, fine, we can handle those, but the
poor players who come in are now the majority and we think that
brakes should be put on somehow and it is the FA's responsibility
as far as we are concerned and it is the Government's responsibility
to protect our national game. The top of that national game is
your national team. We are never going to have a quality national
team unless our youngsters have a vehicle to go through.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Brady
42. We all accept that there are some world-class
overseas players playing here but Mr Barnwell said that the majority
are not those world-class players. Could you give some idea, some
impression, as to what percentage in your view—obviously
it will vary between one and another witness—would actually
be genuine world-class players who ought to come in under whatever
system?
(Mr Taylor) It is a fair question and one we tried
to answer by the system we had originally agreed with the relevant
bodies[1]
and now those relevant bodies are not consulted, that is the FA,
the two employers' bodies, the League and the Premier League and
one workers' representative body, the PFA; a system we had which
was to make sure they were top quality, not displacing resident
labour, proving they were enhancing the game. There was a post-entry
review and that post-entry review said they would be expected
to play a reasonable number of games (75 per cent) in the first
team if these players were fit. We found when that post-entry
review was looked at that there would have been approximately
30 to 40 per cent of players who were just not meeting the criteria
by which they came in. That would be a fair assessment. It was
almost a perfect way of defining whether you had the criteria
right. I was very disappointed that that was removed because now
it says a work permit is there, for the duration of the contract
and the fact is that this 30 to 40 per cent, perhaps even more
because of the squad system, are not starting games regularly.
They are the players, no disrespect—I would never be disrespectful
to any professional footballer in the whole world—who because
they are in reserve sides, squad teams, impede development programmes—they
say the young players will rise to the surface, but they need
to see some light at the end of the tunnel. If they are not given
an opportunity, we are not going to find the Beckhams and Owens
of this world and they cannot get through because there is this
logjam of foreign players. I would say that even with the system
as we had it, as refined as we had it, the post-entry review showed
approximately 40 per cent not meeting the criteria. That is realistic.
I could inflate it to my advantage but I do not intend to do that.
I would say 40 per cent just did not meet the criteria under the
old stricter quality control. Now it is much more eroded; I would
say it would now be up to two thirds to three quarters who will
not be meeting the criteria.
The Sub-committee suspended from 4.28 p.m.
to 4.38 p.m. for a division in the House.
Judy Mallaber
43. Would you say that the fact that clubs are
looking abroad for new players even if, as you suggest, they are
not necessarily of the top quality you are looking for, suggests
that not enough is being done to develop new young players here
or are you saying that a lot is being done to develop new young
players but they get blocked in terms of going up the league or
there just not being jobs for them? Could you combine that with
saying something about what is being done or should be done to
invest in new young players?
(Mr Taylor) I would say there are two parts to it
really. They have always said that for various reasons the domestic
transfer fees were too high for the players available and that
there were players abroad whom they considered better who were
cheaper, to illustrate the cheaper labour aspect. That turns out
to be contradictory when you see the money which has gone abroad
and the fact that very often such players will come in the front
door with a fanfare, often £½ million, £1 million,
£2 million, £3 million, do not make the grade for various
reasons and then they slip away out of the back door because they
have not settled, their form has not been good enough and as a
result there is a loss. To some extent it is false economy and
I have also illustrated the fact that this is a more delicate
area. There is a very big network of agents and it is for John
to speak about but there have been quite a few "strange"
deals whereby players have been bought as a result of video evidence
and when you look at a CV you very rarely see a bad one. With
video evidence, you know, I could do a highlight of my career
which would make me look like Pelé. There is a network
of agents but you would think in the end that it does not pay
anybody to buy players who are clearly not good because it would
lose them their job. They must genuinely think that these players
are better than those available here and by that I would reiterate,
if I may, that because there is such a demand for success, and
they do feel where there is a ready-made international available
then perhaps they have a quick-fix team which can keep them in
a job and avoid relegation. You must avoid relegation from the
Premiership in particular because that is a trapdoor. The money
going to the Premiership from television alone is £200+ million
to 20 clubs. The remaining 72 clubs in the football league share
just approximately £25 million, so the gap is massive. There
is this tremendous pressure to try to stay there. To bring in
a young player is not unlike any other profession really. With
a youngster it is like bringing flowers out into the daylight.
You introduce them and put them back. You could not put a young
player at 17 or 18, though I was fortunate enough to get into
a team, a few years ago you could be in the first team a lot younger;
Duncan Edwards played with England at 18. These days the pressure
and quality perhaps have meant that "young" has a different
definition. You talk of youngsters now in their early 20s. That
being the case, you could not put a young player in and leave
him in because you will damage him. Alex Ferguson has shown how
to bring on these young players. He has brought them together
from an early age, 10, 11, 12. They play together, they have team
spirit, he puts them in, he takes them out, he puts them in, he
takes them out. Gradually they are ready to be in and get a permanent
place. West Ham won the Youth Cup not many years ago. They have
a top quality player called Joe Cole and Harry Redknapp has the
job of introducing him, taking him out, giving him more experience.
Now you find if they are in the bottom half of the Premiership
they look at that trapdoor more than look to the top. It is a
bit of a monopoly on success by fewer and fewer clubs these days
because of the way the money is going. Fearful of relegation,
they want to play these ready-made players and as a result in
a way they do not have the patience which is needed to groom young
players. We put £2 million of PFA money into the football
scholarship programme. Granted a lot of that is for education
if they do not make the grade, but there is also £10 million,
£5 million from the Government via Sport England, £5
million from the Premier League going into the academies. We are
looking to get better coaches. I do believe the quality is there
but there is still this reluctance to introduce it because of
this white hot atmosphere and that is the difficulty.
44. You are saying there are programmes for
developing young people and obviously some clubs, though from
what you are suggesting it is a limited number ... No?
(Mr Taylor) No—all clubs have youth and development
programmes.
45. You can come back on that but I will put
my question. If there is development going on with young players,
why do young British players not have success in getting taken
on in other European countries? You do not tend to hear about
that.
(Mr Taylor) That is a good question. When I was talking
about this imbalance of payments, the fact is that our players
have not been particularly sought abroad. A player like David
Beckham or Michael Owen would have absolutely no problem: they
would be wanted abroad. The fact is that our country is now, because
of the television money, one of the highest economies in football
terms in the world. It is a honeypot to which football bees are
gravitating. You could call it one of the good sides of it, as
our best players do not need to go abroad for better money because
it is available here. That is why we are finding a lot of foreign
players. Players get married quite early on in life and everybody
likes to stay where they are happy, where they are being played
regularly. Of course there are some mercenaries who will always
move around the world but in general it is like the situation
when they removed the maximum wage. They said it would be helter-skelter,
players moving everywhere. If players are looked after, treated
well, they settle in an area, they are in the first team, they
like to stay there. There are not many English players who would
prefer to play abroad. Steve McManaman has just gone to Real Madrid
because that is big money, but in reality they often return quickly
because—you would expect me to say this—English football
is very attractive. It is good quality and it is competitive.
Having said that, there have been a few players who have gone
abroad, people like Kevin Keegan who is of a mentality to be able
to adapt. We do get young players from abroad. They do not take
ours because ours prefer to stay here and there is a culture and
an environment which they are used to and prefer. I would really
feel worried if we did not have a good system of youth academies
but in fairness if they are not getting the chance in this country
I suppose they could look abroad. Ideally you would want to keep
your best players here, would you not?
(Mr Barnwell) On the import versus export, if you
want to put it in those terms, in this country we have more licensed
international agents than anywhere else in the world. At the last
count there were something like nearly 70. It is in their interests
to bring foreign players in here because it is a lucrative market.
It is also in their interests to destabilise the same player and
keep him moving as we saw with Van Hooijdonk. I would also suggest,
having worked abroad myself, that a large majority of the foreign
players who come in here do speak the language quite well.
46. You were shaking your head, which was why
I was interested, when I said maybe only a few clubs did youth
development. Can you very briefly tell us?
(Mr Barnwell) Youth development is important. The
academies, which are a modern phenomenon over the last two years,
allow you for the first time in football history to have access
to boys at school at 10 years of age, but you must have a business
plan. In that business plan there has to be a full-time educationist,
there has to be a great range of people so it is not just the
development of the boy as a player, it is the development of the
boy as a citizen. History tells you that no matter how good those
boys are, and they are the elite, a large majority will not make
it to the very top. Football has recognised it has a responsibility
to those boys to prepare them for other things. It is a holistic
approach; it is very, very expensive. There is a full-time staff
of 15 for the academies and they have to have full-time education
when they are brought away from the school for that period to
take it through. There are 38 academies at this moment who have
invested in it: the 20 Premiership clubs and 18 from the Nationwide.
The other clubs have and do run centres of excellence. Every club
has a centre of excellence which is obviously less expensive because
you could not expect Exeter to invest £3.5 million in a school
of excellence. You can raise a young boy or prepare a young boy
in football terms just as easily at Exeter as at Arsenal if you
have the right coaches to do it—because bricks and mortar
never produced a player. At the moment the FA have embarked, quite
rightly, on a programme of improving the standard of coaches in
this country. There is now a coaching licence to bring everybody
up to uniform UEFA standards as against the standards we had before.
Football has been very proactive in the development of youngsters
right the way through. For the first time, we can now have our
boys from 10 years of age, which is vital to the development of
them. As yet we have not been at it long enough to see the rewards
from it.
(Mr Taylor) In actual fact, I do not know another
country which is now spending as much money on youth development
as we are and that is why it is encouraging. As a parent you would
want them to stay here. The irony is whether we can see the results
of that investment, to be fair.
Mr Brady
47. Given that the number of non-EEA players
in the United Kingdom is so small by comparison with the number
of EEA players, is it really worth worrying about the question
of work permits for the non-European nationals? Is not the real
problem one which is about the open door which seems to apply
at the moment for EEA players?
(Mr Taylor) Because the European Union has 21 countries
and the EEA with Norway, Iceland and Austria you would think there
would be enough to choose from but in actual fact there are about
another 180 countries in the world out there and at times you
get the impression that there are representatives of all those
countries playing in this country. I do feel if the controls were
relaxed that in fact there would be. It is a bit like a prophet
in his own land. The fashion now, as you will know from supporters
of your own clubs, is to have foreign players, this feeling that
we need this introduction, it adds spice and variety. From that
point of view, if it were open door the problem would just exacerbate
and then when that supply dries up from abroad you would have
many disenchanted parents who had told their youngsters not to
go into football, to look at other sports or even not consider
sport at all. For sport in general we do need our own role models.
My managers are given that task whether they like it or not and
it is good if we can see it is possible to get from the base of
a ladder to the top as an example to the rest of youth in this
country. We are in danger of not providing those role models.
Mr Pearson
48. We have a highly successful Premier League,
providing superb entertainment and as politicians we should be
very careful about wanting to muck around with it. Certainly some
comments by colleagues in another field about managers do not
go down very well nor are they particularly helpful. You are obviously
aware of reports that the Bosman judgment might be extended
so that non-EU nationals could actually be playing for an Italian
club and then come over under contract. There is also the judgment
in the case of this Polish basketball player. What do you think
the effects of lawyers mucking around with football are likely
to be if we do not do something about it?
(Mr Taylor) Lawyers and agents will work particularly
for their individual clients. They do not particularly have a
regard for the overall benefit of the game and that is the job
of ourselves as football bodies. From that point of view that
is why I think it is realistic to try to approach the European
Commission to say, whilst we have international fixtures in sport
let us try to do our best to create a fair balance and a fair
competition and look at sport as a separate entity from normal
business rules, particularly in order to try to encourage the
development of young talent. I do really feel that is something
European Ministers, Sports Ministers especially, could get together
and agree on, in response to what you are saying.
49. Given what you said earlier, do you think
the Government has taken its eye off the ball and given into the
big money clubs in relaxing the work permit regulations?
(Mr Taylor) Definitely; without any shadow of doubt.
(Ms Collins) Yes.
(Mr Taylor) Which is surprising really, being political.
You would expect a Labour Government would make some concessions
to the unions and see about creating jobs for the indigenous workforce.
Because it is football, oh well it is football, it is not the
same as other workforces and as a result we have found ourselves
banging our heads against a brick wall. All we are trying to achieve
is a fair balance and the imbalance now is very much against home-grown
talent.
50. This is a Government which believes in fairness
not favours. Let me pursue two things: one is the issue about
quotas and the FA's proposal that there might be a quota for non-EU
nationals and your views about that. More broadly you are saying
have a set of proposals saying five or six players should come
from the home country. What do you think Government should be
doing? Should we initially be going for EU quotas, should we be
arguing in support of FIFA or should we just let you get on with
it?
(Mr Taylor) They say keep politics out of sport. Politics
is in sport and football has needed Government on many issues,
not least of which following Heysel, was the need to encourage
better behaviour and bring in legislation and work with the football
authorities; following Hillsborough, the same type of collective
approach. I see no reason why Government should not adopt the
same approach in working with the football bodies for the overall
benefit of the game and particularly with the workforce of that
industry. I do believe it is possible to work together and I see
the job of Government as a quality control. I would not think
you would want this country to be inundated with labour which
was not better but which was cheaper. That would be counterproductive
to what our principles should be.
51. Tougher work permit regulations, arguing
you are maybe up for changing the law and having an agreement
not just on non-EEA players but a certain number of UK players
in a side.
(Mr Taylor) Yes. I know it sounds strange and you
have to be very sensitive not to sound xenophobic, but I would
really think it is our job to encourage young United Kingdom talent
rather than be a finishing school for young talent from France,
Italy, Germany. That is not xenophobic that is trying to get a
sense of proportion and balance.
Chairman
52. It is most unlike a woman not to be able
to get a word in edgeways. Joanna has been trying to speak.
(Ms Collins) There have been some very interesting
points in questions and answers in the last five minutes and quite
a lot of the questions you have asked and the answers given are
actually going on now, certainly in ice hockey, which I think
the Government ought to be taking a look at. What is going on
in Europe is that countries in certain professional sports are
actively looking at ways of controlling or bringing under control
the impact of foreign players, to bring them into the broadest
context, having on national teams standing and development of
junior players, etcetera. Mr Brady raised a question about whether
it is so important to control work permits. Ice hockey is a good
case in point. As I mentioned earlier, we have 53 work permits
out of a workforce of 160. We have criteria which are very low
compared to football. Players do not have to be internationally
established. It is about as weak as you can get in a work permit
criterion for professional sport other than basketball at the
moment. If football goes down the same road, then you basically
have an open house and rubber stamp and tick box exercise which
is what I understand is being proposed and practically anybody
can come in and it is virtually impossible not to get a work permit,
then you are very soon going to have the same percentage of work
permits in football that I have in ice hockey. Then there would
be questions not just asked in this room, there would be questions
asked down in the House. That is a very important factor which
you should be considering.
Mr Twigg
53. May I start by declaring an interest? I
am not only an Arsenal supporter but about half of Arsenal's overseas
players live in my constituency so I have to be a little careful
in what I say. Moving into a little more detail in terms of the
question of quality control and the criteria which are used at
the moment, last week we had the Football League, and Premier
League here and they put a lot of emphasis on criticising the
use of FIFA rankings. I should be interested in your perspective
on that, on what you see as the shortcomings of the FIFA rankings
and perhaps you could elaborate a bit on possible changes which
could be made to that system to improve the quality control.
(Mr Taylor) It is accepted in the world that anybody
who knows football will know that the heavyweight football countries
are Brazil, Italy and Germany and will know the heavyweight football
clubs and the leagues. You think of Serie A in Italy. I did want
to make the point when asked about quotas, it is important if
we even think about quotas that we should think about the top
level. If they are going to make a contribution that should be
realistic in the Premier League or at least Division One, but
once you take it all the way down, I believe you are just not
meeting what the criteria is from that point of view. In answer
to your question on FIFA rankings and the shortcomings, I would
make the point that quality clubs, quality nations should of course
have a weighting. If you have a player like Juninho, in fairness
he is accepted as a quality player but because it is Brazil, the
standards to get into the top Brazilian team would be particularly
high and in Germany and Italy. There should be a weighting for
the best nations. We have also been fair in the past to players
like George Weah from Liberia. One example we have is Dwight Yorke
from Trinidad and Tobago. He came with a very special emphasis
from quality judges who were respected and we said this was a
particular diamond, not from a high status country but he deserved
a chance. We are never against the flexibility to look at somebody
who would be highly ranked and say this is a special case and
let us not deny that, but not to make that special case, the exception,
to become the rule, because next minute you will get clubs who
will say, we allowed that player in and that was a low country,
so they want this one in. What we have found is that whenever
the Department has wanted to make what is a judgmental case, each
on its merits, nice and clear, everybody in the world wants to
go into a drawer and say that is a yes, that is a no. The fact
is that each case has particular merits and that is why you need
flexibility for those cases but those should be the exception
rather than the rule.
54. You would not want to allow the clubs simply
to decide it on merit and not have any kind of ranking for the
country or club or league which the player is currently in, which
seemed to be the direction the League was taking last week.
(Mr Taylor) When the Department used to consult the
PFA, the FA and the League, you would know the player by virtue
of the club he was with, the league he was in, the country he
was in. I like to think I know my football but if you ask me now,
with so many names put forward for work permits, I have just not
heard of the players. So it is extremely difficult. As a judge,
how do you judge best? You look at the country, you look at the
league and you look at the wages. We are in such a global village
now, there is such a demand for rare football talent, that the
salary will indicate whether he is a good player. That is why
we felt the salary was a good measure. Dwight Yorke could have
come in for less money and Peter Ndlovu could have come in from
Africa to Coventry. Why should those players suffer getting less
than the market rate just because they have come from a country
with a poorer economy than ours? We felt that was disadvantageous
to them and we were not doing the job for them. That was why salary
was always a good indicator. I know this is difficult because
it is a delicate one with the House of Commons, but if you look
at market forces, usually a salary will indicate more often than
not quality. It is sad to say this because it will often throw
up an underdog which makes it attractive but you will usually
find that those teams who win most games are the ones paying most
money because they have the best players. I do not like banging
that drum because I love the underdog to come through. However,
it is a very good indicator of what is good and what is less good.
Chairman
55. We had some evidence that really the salary
criteria were used to push the wages up and it was not really
the test of quality that you are saying there. What do you think
about that?
(Mr Taylor) We had a case with Southampton where they
did say it was a farce because if they paid this player more money
he would get his work permit. It was not just down to that. They
made it appear a silly situation from that point of view. It was
not just about wages with that particular player, it was about
international appearances and the status of the country he was
from. We still felt that such a player should receive the same
money as other first team players.
(Ms Collins) What I would say about the salaries is
that obviously when the decision was made to remove the salary
criteria it impacted on all the other sports which were involved
in work criteria. It is an important factor. I would say that
the salary has as much to do with the ability of the agent to
knock up the salary when he is negotiating on behalf of players
as anything else. In the minor professional sports there is a
problem with many players being brought in on work permits who
are actually paid significantly less than those players who do
not need work permits. That seems to me to undermine one of the
points of the work permit criteria which when one reads all the
documentation players are not only meant to be of a better quality,
but also to enhance the sport and to be paid, certainly not less
than available resident EU/UK labour. That is not always the case.
(Mr Taylor) That was the point I was making because
the club in question was Southampton. If they felt that player
was better than those available here and was going to be a regular
first team player I see no reason why he should not receive the
salary that other first team players were getting. I thought that
was part of the criteria and I was amazed that they made such
an issue about it. As businessmen they will come with a contrary
view and say—and this is what gets put to you gentlemen
and ladies—we should not deny them the right to get their
labour from wherever they want in the world and pay it tuppence
an hour if they want. That was when I was on about the quality
control and that is why I feel that this country should be about
quality control, particularly in professional sport.
Mr Pearson
56. May I double check your views on quotas
for non-EU nationals? What sort of quotas will you want to see
for Premiership and for the other divisions? As you are probably
aware, the FA are saying let us have quotas and get rid of work
permits, we will just be allowed to fill our quotas. What would
your response be to that?
(Mr Taylor) It used to be three foreign players, three
non-UK/Republic of Ireland. Now that only applies to non-EUs.
Because of the European Union, it is difficult. In an ideal world
it would be nice to think that the Premier League would have one,
but they would never accept that in a month of Sundays and would
challenge it. I do not think they should have more than two because
of the Bosman ruling. Ken Bates has done a good job for
Chelsea but I felt that to find the team playing for Chelsea without
one United Kingdom player sent out signals that we should make
a response to. I would also say that you would not say the Football
League should not have any but it should be at the top level of
the Football League because this is supposed to be about starting
from where we began, established players, enhancing the game with
a contribution to make at the highest level. At Division One I
would say one.
(Ms Collins) On your question of quotas again I can
give you a parallel because we actually have a quota system agreed
in ice hockey but it only works when the clubs agree to operate
it. The Department will tell you, as they told us and no doubt
they told football, that they will not involve themselves in a
quota agreement. They will allow it but they will not support
it. It only works when the clubs agree to operate it. In ice hockey
it is eight per squad. In ice hockey, unlike football, you have
a restricted number of players registered and contracted at any
one time. Out of the 22, eight can be work permit players. Human
nature being what it is, you can guess how many each club generally
goes for: the maximum available, which creates a problem in itself.
When you are looking at coaches who want to bring in another player,
and they want to make up their work permit quota, they may already
have 22 players registered and contracted. It is a one-in one-out
situation. That brings me on very briefly to displacement of resident
labour, which has become a serious issue in the minor professional
sports. In minor professional sports players under contract do
find that in order to make a vacancy for a player, a resident
EU player is often released or has his contract terminated. I
had an example only last week of an established GB-international
with 73 caps losing his job to someone on a work permit who was
not, as it turned out, qualified to get a work permit, but did
so because the Department chose to stretch—as they often
say—and use their discretion. It is a very important point
to consider.
57. How about the League Managers?
(Mr Barnwell) I would rather not comment on that one
at this stage. I know my own thoughts which are not the ones you
want but I have no directive from the managers. I should like
to answer that by letter, if I may.
Chairman
58. Please do.
(Mr Barnwell) I shall be sending circulars out to
all the members for an immediate response to this.
Mr Brady
59. Clearly this is not just a problem for the
UK; it may be more a problem for the UK than for other European
countries but it is a problem across the EU. Mr Taylor touched
on this earlier in talking about possible quotas for younger players
from domestic sources. Is it beyond the bounds of credibility
that we might see support across the EU for a quota which would
apply to the EEA area as well as non-EEA?
(Mr Taylor) I hope it is not. It has been put to people
and they say it is the law and you cannot change the law but that
is exactly what you ladies and gentlemen do in a building like
this: you look to change the law if you find it is not working.
With professional sport, because of this inequality we are getting
now, for example all the French team are playing away from France
and nearly all the Scandinavian countries' top players are playing
away. You have quite rightly mentioned this balance between club
versus country and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility
and it would be nice to think there would be support from this
country if there were such an initiative with FIFA, as I have
mentioned, with UEFA and the players' Unions to try to establish
that proportionate system and at least try to bring in a law which
says there should not be that movement up to the age of 21 to
try to prevent this market in what is pretty well child labour
and to try to emphasise, if we can, as Italy do, yes, foreign
players, yes, work permits, but at the very highest level in their
top division and similarly with ours and a fair representation
of home produced talent. It would be nice to think that without
turning the clock back we could encourage the lower division clubs
to set up the sort of nurseries that Crewe Alexandra do and have
a whole conveyor belt of top quality players and get good money
and compensation for them and help keep those clubs alive.
1 PFA, FL, PL, FA and the Department for Education
and Employment. Back
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