Scandinavian coaches worry about average foreign players in the game

National team coaches from Sweden, Norway and Denmark lamented that "ordinary" foreign players on domestic clubs were squeezing out local talent.

The coaches emphasised that the remarks were not targeted at high-level players, but those who are of average talent and did not raise standards in the domestic game.

"In the past few years we have seen the number of, at best, ordinary foreign players rising in Scandinavian clubs," Lars Lagerback of Sweden, Aage Hareide of Norway and Morten Olsen of Denmark said in a note.

"If foreign players do not raise sporting levels in the three countries then they just take up places in squads that would otherwise go to domestic talent and this has a negative impact on the development of Scandinavian talent."

The managers' note added that the Swedish premier league nearly doubled its number of foreign players between 2002 and 2005, going to 21 percent.

Only ten percent in Sweden's top league are eligible to play in the national Under-21 side. In Norway, foreign players are 33 percent of the total but, on average, they were only on the pitch 34 percent of the time, seeming to back up the coaches' statements.

Former Aberdeen striker Robbie Winters and the ex-Rangers and Dundee United midfielder Charlie Miller both now play for top Norwegian club Brann Bergen. No Danish club had less than five foreign players, while Viborg and Aalborg both had as many as ten, according to the coaches.

"The consequences will first hit the national sides in a few years," they added.

That train of thought falls in line with that of FIFA and UEFA, which have been concerned for years about the unrestricted movement of foreign players in the game.

The Bosman Ruling of 1995 ended restrictions on the numbers of overseas players eligible to play for a club, and the football in Europe changed totally, with some major clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal fielding lineups without one English player in them.

Belgian club Beveren have fielded starting line-ups consisting of 11 players from the Ivory Coast in the past.

UEFA is trying to introduce a "homegrown" rule that stipulates that a number of players, developed by the club from its youth programme, must be included in the match day squad. But under EU law, it cannot stipulate the nationality of the young players involved.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.