Impact of leaving EU on football...

[IlsonDerby]

Dont know if this has already been shared but can't remember seeing it. Thought it was very interesting. 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35919247

 

British football could be radically changed if the UK votes to leave the European Union, according to experts and leading voices in the game.

Some fear so-called Brexit could lead to more than 400 players losing the right to play in the UK, while others say it may give home talent a chance.

The UK will decide if it wants to stay in the EU in a referendum on 23 June.

"Leaving the EU will have a much bigger effect on football than people think," said football agent Rachel Anderson.

"We're talking about half of the Premier League needing work permits.

"The short-term impact would be huge but you could argue it will help in the long term as it could force clubs to concentrate on home-grown talent."

Some Leave campaigners, such as Brian Monteith of Leave.eu, argue that a post-Brexit UK could lower freedom-of-movement restrictions on the rest of the world which would "broaden the talent pool, not reduce it".

Who is in danger?

Players with an EU passport are currently free to play in the UK. Those without must meet Home Office criteria, the most important being that they are established internationals for leading nations.

Analysis of squads in the first two tiers in England and the Scottish Premiership has revealed a total of 332 players would fail to meet the current standards.

More than 100 Premier League players would be affected with Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Watford facing losing 11 players from their squads, while Championship side Charlton Athletic would need to find 13 replacements.

In fact, only 23 of the 180 non-British EU players currently playing in the Championship would get work permits - and most of those are former internationals from Ireland or Commonwealth nations with British passports. 

Remarkably, none of the 53 non-British EU players in the Scottish Premiership would qualify for a permit on the basis of their international career alone.

That is the same situation for 63 non-British EU players in League One and 46 in League Two.

The list of players potentially at risk of losing the right to play in Britain includes two of the undoubted stars of the Premier League season: Leicester City's N'Golo Kante and West Ham's Dimitri Payet, although both played and scored for France this week.

West Ham vice-chairman Karren Brady, the face of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, has already written to club bosses throughout the UK warning them a vote to leave would have "devastating consequences".

Premier League boss Richard Scudamore made it clear in a speechto the Institute of Directors last year that his personal view was that Britain should stay in the EU, the world's largest trading bloc.

However, the Premier League's public position is that EU membership is a matter for voters and it always works with "the government of the day".

What could happen?

Privately, the league believes it is almost impossible to know what the situation regarding overseas players would be if the UK votes to leave. It is a stance shared by the Football Association.

The government, for example, could bring in a quota system similar to former Fifa president Sepp Blatter's "six plus five" idea, or it could indeed open the possibility of doing bilateral deals with the likes of Argentina and Brazil to make it easier for their players to work here.

Prior to this season, players without an EU passport were meant to have played in 75% of their national side's competitive games over the past two years.

This only applied to nations ranked in Fifa's top 70. However, appeals were allowed for talented players from lower-ranked sides as well as players who may have missed international call-ups because of injury.

The new rules, brought in after hard lobbying by the FA, were intended to strike a balance between a club's desire to hire the best available and the need for more openings for young British players. 

What are the rules?

A player from a top-10 nation only has to have played in 30% of their games in the two years prior to the date of application to be granted a work permit.

A player from a nation ranked 11-20 must have played in 45% of international games.

That percentage rises to 60% for the next 10 countries, then 75% for nations ranked 31-50.

A vote to leave the EU would mean that players from the 27 countries still in the union would need to meet these criteria.

Dr Gregory Ioannidis, a senior law lecturer from Sheffield Hallam University, believes the rules could be relaxed should the UK leave the EU.

If that happened, then he said he did not "envisage any problems for clubs".

However, he added that it may be difficult for such an agreement to be put into place because footballers "are considered workers in law and it may be the case that they cannot be treated as a special category".

Many experts think the work permit rules will be watered down. For example, non-EU countries like Norway and Switzerland have both made concessions to gain access to the single market.

"I would be surprised if those work permit rules were not recalibrated," said Professor Raymond Boyle, from the University of Glasgow. 

The sports industry expert added: "Countries such as Switzerland simply make their own rules. My sense is that elite commercial sport will always have the clout to influence rules so that they benefit."

What everybody agrees on, though, is that British football would be in for a period of flux as new rules were decided and clubs rebalanced their squads.

"This could be a positive thing for home-grown players in the longer term," said leading agent Simon Bayliff.

"The downside could be the value of the Premier League decreasing, as its attraction is the collection of foreign stars across many clubs.

"I don't personally believe it will have a huge impact on the biggest names but it could have an effect on the general traffic of non-star international players, which may hurt the league's quality and attractiveness to foreign investors.

"But all this depends on how we Brexit - and that is impossible to predict."

 

interesting...

 

[eddie]

Two words of relevance to both the pro and anti camps....

Nobody knows.

Two more words....

Infinite possibilities.

There are dire warnings from both camps of the dire consequences of staying in or of leaving, and for my parting shot I will leave you with two more words frequently voiced on the subject by that sage - or rather, the purchaser of Mel Sage, Arthur Cox....

Pure speculation.

[Wolfie]

Truth is nothing will happen for a number of years as the new rules are worked out and implemented - not just for football but for all other EU workers in the UK.

There are many factors influencing my decision to vote in our out. The effect on football will never be one of them and nor should it be.

[Red_Dawn]

Who cares, the future of this country is far more important than the potential (negative) effect on the state of British football. 

[Day]

32 minutes ago, Red_Dawn said:

Who cares, the future of this country is far more important than the potential (negative) effect on the state of British football. 

Now now, football is still important even if the back to back European Cup winners are heading back for another spell in League 1

[Red_Dawn]

51 minutes ago, David said:

Now now, football is still important even if the back to back European Cup winners are heading back for another spell in League 1

Might not be so bad, maybe we can score a few and win a game! 

Not holding any hopes though

[eddie]

20 minutes ago, Red_Dawn said:

Might not be so bad, maybe we can score a few and win a game! 

Not holding any hopes though

Now then remember the words of M C Elliot*...

The night is always darkest just before the dawn (even a red one)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Mama Cass Elliott

[SaintRam]

Although the night would probably be darkest if the sun wasn't ever going to come back. 

 

[IlsonDerby]

2 hours ago, Red_Dawn said:

Who cares, the future of this country is far more important than the potential (negative) effect on the state of British football. 

Well seeing as this is a FOOTBALL forum and the article is about the effects the decision will have on FOOTBALL it seemed very relevant... 

Lets look at it another way then. Ignoring that it is football - championship footballers are heavily paid. Will that be a huge chunk of income tax lost? 

Id also like to know how many of the health sector workers are EU nationals and whether they have their own set of criteria to meet. Quite worrying that we could potentially lose a lot of our health workers? 

Hotel workers from the EU. Plenty of them. You know England didn't crumble as badly as other nations in the recession due to us being a service nation. A lot of our economy is made through providing services placing less of a burden on manufacturing. How would this effect those? 

So although the core of the article is based on the impact to EU nationals in football it really does lead into a lot more unknowns around other EU nationals working in the UK. 

[Red_Dawn]

1 hour ago, IlsonDerby said:

Well seeing as this is a FOOTBALL forum and the article is about the effects the decision will have on FOOTBALL it seemed very relevant... 

Lets look at it another way then. Ignoring that it is football - championship footballers are heavily paid. Will that be a huge chunk of income tax lost? 

Id also like to know how many of the health sector workers are EU nationals and whether they have their own set of criteria to meet. Quite worrying that we could potentially lose a lot of our health workers? 

Hotel workers from the EU. Plenty of them. You know England didn't crumble as badly as other nations in the recession due to us being a service nation. A lot of our economy is made through providing services placing less of a burden on manufacturing. How would this effect those? 

So although the core of the article is based on the impact to EU nationals in football it really does lead into a lot more unknowns around other EU nationals working in the UK. 

Maybe you should rephrase the article to 'What are the impacts of leaving the EU' then. 

I for one will be voting out of this sinking ship. The short term financial risks are heavily outweighed by losing our democratic status and cultural identity to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. 

[IlsonDerby]

23 minutes ago, Red_Dawn said:

Maybe you should rephrase the article to 'What are the impacts of leaving the EU' then. 

I for one will be voting out of this sinking ship. The short term financial risks are heavily outweighed by losing our democratic status and cultural identity to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. 

Alternatively we could talk about the impact to football, on this football forum, in the football group.

 

Thats your choice which you're entitled to. It is also an opinion and not fact. Please feel free to evidence the claims you're making though. Oh wait you can't because nobody, absolutely nobody, knows what a non EU Britain will look like. Anything said by politicians, economists, business owners is pure speculation (to borrow mcclarens vocabulary). It could be brilliant, it could be awful, it could be in the middle. Nobody knows. 

[Red_Dawn]

50 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

Alternatively we could talk about the impact to football, on this football forum, in the football group.

 

Thats your choice which you're entitled to. It is also an opinion and not fact. Please feel free to evidence the claims you're making though. Oh wait you can't because nobody, absolutely nobody, knows what a non EU Britain will look like. Anything said by politicians, economists, business owners is pure speculation (to borrow mcclarens vocabulary). It could be brilliant, it could be awful, it could be in the middle. Nobody knows. 

It was actually you who chose to start raising points about hotel worker and other issues, but yeah ok talking footballk is fine for me. 

I know for a fact that approximately 60% of our laws are dictated to us by Brussels and post Brexit we'll gain the ability to dictate our own future back. I also know that immigration currently increases the population of this country 180k per year, which is a totally unsustainable figure. And our security services won't be as hard pressed to stop the flow of jihadi fighters hiding amongst the thousands of other fighting age male posing as refugees. 

Call me a little Englander, but I think we'll be much better off out of the EU. 

 

[G-Ram]

Alternatively the clubs could pay females a one off fee to agree to a sham marriage  for the best foreign stars until they qualify for a passport. The biggest clubs probably have the sort of power to make that happen

leaving the EU wont affect the game, they'll be a special rule passed for footballers. Whilst its rumoured highly paid individual avoid tax im sure the government must earn a nice chunk off football, income tax on wages, tax on tv deals VAT on football shirts etc etc.

Its in the governments intrest for the game to remain as popular as it is at the moment. 

 

 

[IlsonDerby]

1 hour ago, Red_Dawn said:

It was actually you who chose to start raising points about hotel worker and other issues, but yeah ok talking footballk is fine for me. 

I know for a fact that approximately 60% of our laws are dictated to us by Brussels and post Brexit we'll gain the ability to dictate our own future back. I also know that immigration currently increases the population of this country 180k per year, which is a totally unsustainable figure. And our security services won't be as hard pressed to stop the flow of jihadi fighters hiding amongst the thousands of other fighting age male posing as refugees. 

Call me a little Englander, but I think we'll be much better off out of the EU. 

 

That's when you include regulations for things such as trade etc. the same regulations that will still impact us if we want to trade with European countries after leaving. It's an inflated figure. 

I'm undecided but I know political researchers that were gonna vote out but having researched it they've changed their minds. 

I won't be taking advice from any national newspaper or politician mind.