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Clubs will find a way to exploit PFA’s new rules

Taylor and Labour need to come up with a new idea, says KADEEM SIMMONDS

The England team is getting worse, anyone that has the patience to sit there and watch them for more than an hour can tell you that. So while I agree that the PFA and FA should be doing all that they can to improve the quality of the national team, I don’t agree with their current plans.

Forcing teams to play home-grown players looks like a good idea now but teams will find a loophole and exploit the rule immediately. 

They are doing it with the current home-grown quota. If you sign a foreign youngster at a young enough age, by time they are 21 they will technically count as a home-grown player due to the current rules.

So telling players that they have to have four home-grown players with one being trained by the club doesn’t change anything.

The league classifies a home-grown player as: “One who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).”

So by their own definition, Chelsea’s Cesc Fabregas (pictured), Manchester United’s Rafael and Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczesny — to name a few —all count as home-grown players. They aren’t the only ones and if this rule comes into fruition then the list will continue to grow.

Teams will just buy more and more kids, training them in their academy so they fit the criteria. Which may make me sound like a cynic but it’s been happening for over a decade and excuse me for not believing in the so-called “elite clubs” to change their ways.

Even if they were to change it to having a minimum number of players having been born in the United Kingdom it won’t stop teams from buying the best youngsters in the country, sticking them in the reserves or out on loan until they get bored of the player and then selling them off without a care in the world when they don’t reach their potential. 

Not to mention trying to tell a bunch of owners or managers who have no interest in how the England national team does that they must drop their £200,000 a week player in order to play a young English player who really isn’t that good but must start on the off-chance he develops to be the next Steven Gerrard or Wayne Rooney.

All the new proposals will do is raise the premium for talented up-and-coming English players — if it wasn’t high enough already — and there is no guarantee that it will improve Roy Hodgson’s team.

Chances are you will see more 16/17-year-olds being paid ridiculous sums of money by the big clubs in an attempt to secure their futures.

I’m not advocating that Greg Dyke and co should give up on England, just that there are other ways to improve the side without meddling with the various leagues. 

Start off by lowering the price for FA coaching badges. I got my level one last year and it cost me £165. It is one of the easiest courses I have ever done and I actually felt ripped off.

You don’t have to know anything about the sport to pass it, as long as you show that you can successfully look after a group of kids then you gain a qualification.

The Level Two course costs nearly double that while the next course, the Uefa B licence, costs £695 if you are a member of the FA or £905 if you haven’t signed up.

The FA are trying to push more coaches to take their advanced youth module course but are charging £2,820 per person. And they wonder why England struggles to find coaches.

Why not introduce the first two badges free to schools around Britain? Players in academies across the country are given the courses for free so why not open it up to the rest of the kids? The FA and government needs to stop ignoring the less fortunate and give everyone an equal chance.

Make it an option for everyone, kids will jump at the chance to gain the qualifications and with the lowered price for the rest of the badges, the number of FA-trained coaches should increase dramatically which can only benefit the next few generations of players.

Next, the focus should be on on getting more kids playing the game in a suitable and safe environment. It is a topic that crops up at least once a year but the FA needs to put money back into grass-roots football sooner rather than later.

Naming Nottingham as the first City of Football is a start but now let’s get the second, third etc. This is only the beginning. 

Part of the reason so many young children are dropping out of the game is that they either have no-where to play or the facilities they play in are so piss-poor that they would rather quit the sport altogether.

The amount of money the Premier League rakes in every year is more than enough to start funnelling that money back into the local communities.

There is even an e-petition (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/46134) which has 30,000 signatures trying to force the government to ensure that the league starts giving back to grass-roots football.

Should this happen then maybe, just maybe, England can start producing more promising youngsters.

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