The problem with counting the number of home grown players in Europe

By Tony Attwood

According to the New York Times website the Arsenal forward Noni Madueke has just been reclassified as a ‘homegrown’ player.    And I am not sure when I last read something weirder in football.

I mean it is not as if he is a youth player who lost his documentation or something.  This is a 23-year-old player who has just joined Arsenal from Chelsea – who had him listed as not homegrown which obviously would have him at a disadvantage.

Now whether Arsenal knew this change was on the way or not I don’t know but given the shortage of home grown players of decent quality and the male gender in some squads that means that the player who cost £48.5million is almost certainly now worth more, given that there is no limit to the number of home growners a club can include in the 25 – other of course than 25.

So we can now conclude that Madueke had indeed been registered to the Football Association or the FA of Wales for three complete seasons before the end of the season in which he became 21 years old.  Even though Chelsea did not have him registered as “homegrown” last season.

Tottenham Hots who seem not to know too much about such technicalities, originally sold the player to PSV, who sold him to Chelsea, who generally have far more players than they can use, so presumably didn’t worry about the registration.  Although it seems it was quite clear that he spent three years in Tottenham’s youth programme (poor chap).   The fact that he did not play for the first team doesn’t make any difference in the the whole homegrown thing, but it seems the Premier League’s Committee of Certain Things (or whoever looks at these issues) thought it did.

What this means is that last season Chelsea had a player registered as not being homegrown, when he was, which is a pretty big blunder for a company with an annual turnover of just under half a billion pounds a year.  I mean, you think they’d employ someone to check who was HG and who wasn’t.  But then, it is Chelsea and their previous owner now lives on a boat, so maybe things can be excused.

But although we can have a jolly good laugh at Chelsea over this, the real problem, I must admit, is that the home growing rules of England and those of Uefa don’t match.   And I know that sounds even dafter than what has gone before, but that is the case.   The player is now homegrown for Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup games, but not for Champions League games!!!!!

If you want an example of just how deep the chaos is within football, here it is.

Uefa define “locally trained players” seemingly in a different way from that which the FA defines them and that means that other clubs now have to start checking if a player who they thought was HG is actually HG by FA rules or by Uefa rules or neither or both.   And the compensation that Uefa and the FA are paying to clubs for this ludicrous cock up is, of course, nothing.  As ever, the authorities’ rule is “It’s our fault – you sort it out – you pay”.

And now Uefa are making it clear that they demand that at least four of the eight association-trained players on the club’s list of players who are registered for Uefa games must have spent at least three complete seasons with the club they are with while between the ages of 15 and 21.

It is of course, ludicrous, and in any other industry, the officials coming up with this sort of nonsense and gibberish would be out on their ears.  

Arsenal don’t seem to have any such problems because they have long taken up the idea of developing first team players from within the academy.  Tottenham meanwhile seem to be urgently trying to re-sign one of the players they have let go before realising their error because of their misunderstanding about the rule book.   The player in question is Kyle Walker-Peters who is available on a free after departing relegated Southampton but he is now with West Ham.   Another option was Noni Madueke, who was in the Totty’s academy but then went to PSV.