Sepp Blatter is once again found entirely the wrong tree to bay at. In his defense, it is one step better than lifting his leg on them – which he ordinarily does.
The so-called “6+5” initiative aimed at limiting the number of foreign players on any team to 5 has received a frosty reception from the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission. With the voluntary demobbing of the G-14, the next obvious step was a good old fashioned FIFA chest pounding. And let us not forget, this is hot on the heels of Blatter’s “I’ll-wait-and-see-how-everyone-else-responds-before-passing-judgement” coup de grace against the EPL's 39th Game proposal.
It seems that the inverse of the common foreign labor dispute lament is true here. Instead of it being an influx of unskilled and untrained foreign laborers that are supplanting the indigenous work force, it is a select group of highly-specialized and grossly-overpaid foreign nationals that are targeted by this newest FIFA initiative.
But, surprise surprise, it is in violation of EU law to place the types of constraints that FIFA is looking to lobby for – and something the EC is not looking to change with any alacrity.
And yet, FIFA now looks to go toe to toe with the force in European politics and stamp its (reads Sepp Blatter’s) mark on the landscape by challenging one of the EU’s key employment tenets. This, as it ordinarily is, is about Sepp Blatter. With his heated iron he is trying to sear his personal brand into football.
Sepp Blatter must either have trouble walking with balls that big or trouble getting a drink on this planet, because they must do things decidedly differently where he comes from. You’ve got to admire his spirit of determination though. Anyone else would’ve given up by now after getting almost everything they’d put their hand to completely and totally wrong.
The supposed root of the initiative is to cultivate the local flora. Blatter can hide behind “develop the local talent pool” mantra all he wants, but if the local lads were good enough, they’d play. It’s as simple as that. Teams are now made of the finest imported materials.
Methinks I detect the unmistakable scent of Mssr. Platini in here. Long time mouthpiece of FIFA before ascending to the UEFA throne, he continually couches his xenophobia in cuddly philosophies that seemingly fear for the plight of the locally-born talent. What we should fear is the colonial wolf being dressed in football’s “well being” wool.
Because this concept, which is tantamount to institutionalized athletic ethnocentrism, was better suited to when Morse was the cutting-edge of information technology and India was a British colony.
We can all hearken to a simpler time when football was watched on a Saturday afternoon, everyone spoke the same language – except maybe Vinny Jones – and the National coach was from the same nation. But we, and football, have since moved on. The curtain has long since fallen on that act. Now the audience and players are from all corners of the globe - something the swollen heads of FIFA and UEFA should bear in a their power-soaked minds.