Free trade in footballers

At the Oxonomics blog they are discussing a proposal by the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, to restrict the number of foreign players allowed in a football team. The plan is dubbed “6+5”, allowing only 5 foreign players to play in a team of 11. At Oxonomics they ask what effect would such a protectionist plan have on English football. There must be a problem in English football as the national team is suffering: witness the shoddy failure to qualify for the regional tournament, let alone the World Cup. And the problem is, so the Blatter argument goes, the number of foreign players at the top English clubs like Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. Oxonomics notes that

Arguments like those of Blatter are popular, and clearly struck a note with many national league representatives at FIFA. But they are just like the calls for trade protection in the US– populist and short-termist.

They go on to make the sensible point that

In the longer term, just as trade protection will not contribute to more wealth for Americans, so 6+5 will not contribute to better national sides (not least because they all compete against each other!). Better English players won’t come from restricting the number of foreign players, because English players will not get the exposure they currently do to the best players in the world, week in week out: the virtue of free competition.

They also explain that

A better English football team will also come from better management; the main cause of England’s recent failure is the mismanagement of their previous manager – an Englishman in Steve McClaren (who incidentally has backed the plan to limit foreigners), allied with the unpredictability in football, something which dictates its popularity the world over – it was only two years ago that England were being touted as serious contenders for the World Cup under the management of the Swede Sven Goran Eriksson.

Protectionist policies will be no more successful in sport than they are in trade in general. One can only hope that any sporting body wishing to implement such “bad economics” plans faces stiff opposition.