Sepp Blatter's Flawed Plan

In reflecting on Sepp Blatter’s new plan to limit the number of foreign players, I can’t help but think that Blatter’s approach is as similarly wrongheaded as the approach that baseball owners took before 1947. Blatter’s plan would limit the number of foreign players that could start for a team

For some time now, Sepp Blatter has fought to place a limit on the number of foreign players that could be on the field at any one time. Blatter’s plan seems to be a solution without a problem. Blatter likely looks back on the old days of football when major teams fielded squads made up almost entirely of players from that home country, and many from the local area. Blatter would like to turn back the clock to this supposed golden era.

The obvious problem, of course, is that the intervening years have rendered Blatter’s view of the world anachronistic and downright antiquated. Globalization has opened up the world, and people have learned to demand quality and value in all things. And, make no mistake about it, if you artificially limit the player’s market, quality will suffer. Blatter might respond that without foreign competition local players might have a chance to grow and flourish, and that the relatively inexpensive salaries demanded by foreign players creates a disincentive to hire local talent.

I would be willing to admit that the choice comes down to having foreign players playing for slightly less or local players playing at artificially inflated prices. To me, the choice between higher quality at lower rates versus lower quality at higher rates does not seem all that complex.

In many respects, Sepp Blatter seems trapped in the past. The European Union and the bevy of international agreements designed to facilitate the free movement of people and goods indicates that the kind of empty nationalism touted by Blatter is really quite silly and pathetic. Though it may make me sound more of a Milton Freidman acolyte than I actually am, I do believe that the presence of foreign players only forces local talent to improve. To be sure, there will be losers in this process. There are English players who will never get to play in the Premiership because an Adebayor, Dempsey or Essien took their place, but is this a bad thing? Jackie Robinson took someone else’s spot, and every minority or woman who enrolls in a university or takes a job, does so in the place of a white male who might previously have had the position. Openness and fairness have a price, but the benefits far outweigh that price.

If you want a clear indication of just how much a sports league can benefit from the presence of large numbers of international players, look no further than the NBA. Not only has the overall quality of the league improved, but fans seem not to care whether their star is a German, Frenchman, Argentine, Canadian, Mexican or American.

So, Sepp, let them play. African players are not destroying the Premiership, American players aren’t destroying the English National Team, and the small army of Brazilians playing overseas has only inured to the benefit of the global game. Agree? Disagree? Let Us Know What You Think!