What will the Premier League be like once Britain pulls out of the EU?

What will the Premier League be like once Britain pulls out of the EU?

It is no secret that all 20 Premier League clubs supported a statement from the League itself saying that they hoped football supporters would vote Remain in the UK’s referendum on its future relationship with Europe. Arsene Wenger in particular spoke about the difficulties ahead if the UK were to leave.

It is also no secret that the FA were inclined very strongly indeed towards the Leave campaign. And of course as we all know, Leave won.

Understanding why the League and the FA took such different perspectives explains a huge amount about the difference between the League and the FA and also gives us a clue as to what will happen now that the UK has voted to leave.
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Of course we don’t know anything about how the negotiations between the UK and the EU will pan out over the next two years or so, but the sticking point looks like being immigration, and if the UK doesn’t give way on the issue of the right of movement between EU countries then it is unlikely that the UK will have much in the way of bargaining power on anything else.

Obviously there are differences of opinion at all level, and I know there are some who feel that the EU will cave in and give the UK anything it wants, because they have a desperate need for our markets. But even if you feel that is right and that happens, sadly the Premier League is likely to suffer a slow decline. Because if the free movement of people across the EU into Britain stops we’ll still be able to go on holiday in Europe, and Europeans will be able to come to the UK, but in terms of working in the UK, no. That will be off the agenda.

What makes me so sure that player movement will be restrcited is that two years ago the UK government handed over the control of which footballers could come and work in the UK from outside the EU, to the FA. It is not a Home Office issue any more. Not a government issue. The visas are controlled by the FA.

At the moment they just control the influx of players from outside the EU into the UK. Soon it will be all players from outside the UK who are subject to this control. Now the FA has had a set and standard policy for years and years which says that the continual failure of the England team to make a mark on the world stage (apart from the one time it was allowed to play all its world cup games at Wembley) is due to the fact that too many foreigners play in the Premier League.

Because of this, it argues, brave young English souls don’t get the chance to have experience at the highest level (around 32% of the players in the League are qualified to play for England).

Now the fact that this is a very odd argument has been recognised for years by a lot of people. The reason that English players are not playing in the Premier League is because they are not considered good enough by the Premier League managers. If that were not the case and there were to be some sort of bizarre anti-English bias among PL managers then these players would be able to playing in the Championship or in other leagues in Europe and showing themselves to be great players and quickly they would be brought back to the homeland.

Indeed if we were to look at (for example) Portugal, who are doing very well at the moment in the Euros, we find that most of their players are actually playing outside their country. They have a population of around one fifth of that of England, and a very weak home league, and yet they consistently outdo England on the football pitch.

So, a smaller population and all the top players playing outside the country and they keep doing better than England. That doesn’t sound as if having more English players playing in the Premier League will make much difference.

In fact, a proper analysis of the situation was first done about six years ago. This review compared a wide array of factors in different countries and looked to see which ones correlate with success on the pitch. The answer that came out loud and clear was the number of qualified coaches per 1000 people in the country.

The analysis has been since rerun by the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, and each time they have come up with the same answer. The countries that do well, have the highest number of coaches per 1000 people.

Unfortunately the FA is unbending on this matter, and it has been given the power by the UK government to decide who can play football professionally in England. It is certain that once the UK leaves the EU, foreign players will stop coming to this country, and we will be back to the days before 1995, (when very few foreign players ever came to the country).

Now you might note at this point that before 1995 England didn’t do any better on the world stage of football than they do now (except when playing all their world cup matches at Wembley, as I noted above). So, that again points to the fact that it will be downhill all the way.

Worse, if as predicted by every economist whose works I have read, the pound sinks against other currencies, it is going to cost more and more to buy in footballers from abroad, even when one can get a work permit.

As a result the Premier League will be less attractive to TV audiences both in England, and indeed around the world. So the amount of money that flows into the English game from broadcasting will drop probably very quickly.

Here then we have the conundrum. Players will cost more. Income will decline. Fewer and fewer non-British players will get the right to work in England. The quality of the England team won’t rise, so we won’t get worldwide publicity that way. There will be a decline in the numbers watching PL games to the level of the 1970s and 1980s.

You don’t have to believe that all five of those points will happen. Just a couple of them will be enough to send the Premier League down in the rankings. But there is one more thing. No market ever stands still when one of its players shows weakness. Until the 21st century the Premier League was by and large just
another League. Go back to the time when Liverpool supporters rioted at the Heysel Stadium in 1985, and the 1st Division clubs were the pariah of football, banned from Europe, shunned by the world. The 1st Division was the absolute outsider. No one wanted to know us.

Go back to the 1970s and anyone who supported a football club in England and went to matches was considered by the English media and the public at large as one step away from being a convict. Not only did the rest of the world not care about us, even non-footballing English people didn’t have a positive feel for football. So the moment the Premier League starts its downward spiral, other Leagues will look to move in. The Spanish League already attracts a decent audience on TV in the UK. The Italian League used to with its Channel 4 shows, and then fell apart as a result of the match fixing scandal. You can be sure that those two leagues and maybe one or two others will seize the opportunity of the Premier Leagues self-inflicted decline to rise up.

Go on ten years, and unless someone is able to stop the FA from imposing its isolationist policies, the Premier League will have a status in Europe similar to that of the French League today. Indeed it could happen a lot faster than that, if the FA really are let loose on the project.

Whichever way you look at it, we are going backwards. It might be to the early 1990s, or the 1980s or even the 1970s. The last 16 years will become known as the Golden Age, never to be seen again. You’ve got one or maybe two more years to enjoy it.

Contributed by Tony Attwood