Here’s a good question: How would the Premiership look today if a certain Belgian footballer, of moderate talent, hadn’t triggered the biggest shake-up in football by launching a case before the European Court of Justice?

Remember Jean-Marc Bosman, who wanted to leave his club at the end of his contract but the club were demanding a transfer fee if he moved on – total restraint of trade? Bosman, bless him, won his case hands down and football’s transfer and contract laws were changed for ever. The floodgates were open; barriers came down; footballers could move wherever they wanted at the end of their contracts (and before, of course); freedom was theirs.

What started as a trickle in the then English First Division more than a decade ago, was to become the present-day flood that has seen the Premiership swamped by foreign players from all over the world. It is estimated that by 2010, more than 50 per cent of footballers in the Premiership will be foreigners.

'There are only 11 places in a team and if half of those places are filled by Europeans it means that half-a-dozen English lads are sitting on their thumbs'


It was Spurs who began the trend when they brought the wonderful Argentinian pair Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa to White Hart Lane after the 1978 World Cup - more than 15 years before Bosman. (Villa’s name brings a smile to my face every time when I recall that goal he scored against Manchester City in the 1981 FA Cup Final).

Since Bosman, hundreds of players, mainly from Europe, but also from as far afield as China, Australia and the United States, have paraded their skills in the Premiership. But let’s not be naïve enough to think that they believed England was a wonderful place to live or that we had been starved of top-quality entertainment for so long that they would sprinkle our mundane lives with stardust.

Nothing of the kind. They came because England was awash with money, the Sky had opened up and there was an absolute deluge of the filthy stuff. Premiership clubs couldn’t spend it fast enough in outrageously inflated transfer fees and salaries that were to make a middle-eastern potentate feel like a pauper.

I’m not complaining, simply stating facts. Like millions of football fans I have been privileged to see some of the greatest talents ever to grace any football stage anywhere in the world. But the great influx has, I feel, had a detrimental effect on the England team.

The English game has expanded at the expense of the English-born player. There are only 11 places in a team and if half of those places are filled by Europeans it means that half-a-dozen English lads are sitting on their thumbs. It doesn’t take an Einstein to come up with the result that the English production line is only working at half capacity.

Here are a couple of examples. Did you know that on Boxing Day, 1999, Chelsea were the first team in the Premiership to field an “all foreign” team? They won 2-1 at Southampton. Did you also  know that two months later, in Chelsea’s Champions League game against Lazio, there was not a single English player in the pre-game photo-shoot?

Did you realise that in the 2000 Youth Cup Final against Coventry, Arsenal’s three outstanding youngsters were an Italian centre-back, a German full-back and a French striker?

Just as there will inevitably have to be a salary cap in the Premiership, so will there need to be a cap on the number of imports if England are ever going to be able to field a team capable of winning something other than a four-nation pre-season tournament.

I leave you with this fabulous Foreigners XI. If you can come up with more, or better, feel free:

Schmeichel (Man Utd); Lauren (Arsenal), Carvalho (Chelsea), Stam (Man Utd), Heinze (Man Utd); Pires (Arsenal), Kinkladze (Man City), Juninho (Middlesbrough), Ginola (Spurs); Cantona (Man Utd), Henry (Arsenal).