Hilary Abernathay #FBPDataEvidenceTruth Profile picture
Gvmt Policy: ditch evidence, data and economics. It's populism you mugs, no plans needed; no one cares if it works: no one cares if it got done. UK ⏩🍌Republic

Aug 18, 2019, 12 tweets

This thread with it's totally wrong Harry Kane analogy got us thinking.

Brexit, football and the Premier League. We found surprisingly little written, given how many "immigrants" it attracts.

So here's 10 football impacts of Brexit you might not know.

1. Premier League Clubs Hate Brexit.

All 20 of them came out against Brexit in 2016. The reasons were all similar and boiled down not to economics but attitude.

The Premier League is us at our best. Brits working with non Brits to make everyone better.

Brexit takes us back.

2. Transfer Market
There's a concern that the whole transfer process will break for the UK, or become more complicated.
We know that could happen just because of today's complexity of hiring non EU players.

The result is we lose out to clubs In the EU but gain nothing globally.

3. No youth pipeline
The Premier League currently gets away with transferring 16 year old players within the EU.
While this is already controversial for some, others think its a good thing to build clubs' futures.

Either way it seems this will come to an end with brexit.

4. Not just the players
Arguably the transformation of British football into the world's best league is as much down to the coaches and managers.

Whatever complexities we impose on the players of course also happen to the coaches. Maybe we never needed those foreigners?

5. Hurts us more than them
The massive drop in pound is already making it harder for our clubs to compete for players in Europe.

We like to say Brexit hurts them as much as us. In this case we are the world's best. And we are an importer of talent. So yes. It hurts us much more.

6.Takes away control
We dont know which immigration system we will use after Brexit. But we can see what happens if we apply non EU criteria to EU players.

Goal.com list N'Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez as examples of players who couldn't move here under non EU rules

7. We swing both ways
Most people think the transfer of players to Europe has been a good thing, bringing different experiences back to our game.

Brexit makes our players look complicated and hard to handle, with the inevitable result of more of them losing out to EU clubs

8. The English are Back
Some people think Brexit will help the English game (and presumably Scotland, Wales. NI) by creating more opportunities for local talent.

I guess that all depends whether you think that's a good step for the game or a return to the past.

9. More than football
An obscure ruling by the ECJ is the basis for many changes above.

It sanctioned players moving at the end of contract without transfer fees. This ruling was then extended to other sports. With brexit both go.
So, a good thing for British sport? You decide.

10. Homegrown shows the way
Whatever brexit brings with it the Homegrown rule debate showed it will be disruptive and costly

Clubs forced to sell EU players at the wrong time to comply with Brexit quotas can only be bad short term even if you think it's good for long term talent

Thanks for reading. It's interesting. If Brexit were football, people would pour over this and argue about it for years.

They'd make slow careful decisions.

They would not say fook off Europe no deal. Is our country less important than football? We already know the answer.

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