Thanks Swab…. Just found this online… and I quote ;
This rule was made in the hope of nurturing more England or at least UK-born players in the premier league, which was part of the League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, a youth development England-based scheme.
The home-grown player rule states that each of the 20 English premier league teams of every season must list a 25-man squad comprising only senior players aged 21 and above.
Of these 21 players, at least 8 must be home-grown, which meant a team could only have a maximum of 17 foreign players in the team at a time.
Following the calculations of this rule, the maximum number of players that can play in the EPL would be 17 players X 20 clubs which would be 340 foreign players under normal circumstances.
This is probably the biggest loophole of the rule.
A foreigner could be considered as an English Home-grown player if he spent three years in an England-based club academy before turning 21.
This means that a Ghanian who joins Chelsea youth academy at the age of 18 and spends three years with the team before turning 21 will be considered home-grown.
Paul Pogba, Cesc Fabregas, and Victor Moses were all beneficiaries of this slack as they were considered as English Home-grown players despite being foreigners.
Greg Dyke, the former president of the FA, tried to counter this loophole by asserting that players would be considered home-grown if they spent at least three years in an English academy before turning 18.
This meant a player must, at most, start playing football at the age of fifteen to be considered Home-grown.
If implemented, this law would see lesser foreign players in England academy as football regulations do not allow the movement of youth players across borders below sixteen.
This rule has not been implemented yet which means that it is currently possible to have more than 340 foreign players in the EPL if foreign nationals were listed among the 8 home-grown players list.
Interesting…
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