Chelsea Foreigners Take FA Youth Cup

It must be pleasing to Chelsea fans that their 18 year olds topped Aston Villa 3-2 in a two-legged final to cop this season’s coveted FA Youth Cup. After all, they haven’t had a youth team member rise through the ranks to the first team since JT himself made the grade back in 1998.

But it’s not that simple.

On September 1^st, the Premier League will impose their ‘Grow Your Own’ policy, whereby clubs will be required to register in their 25-man squad eight homegrown players – who have played with an English or Welsh club for at least three years before their 21^st birthday. A precursor to FIFA’s developing ‘Home Grown’ rule, of the top four teams in the Premiership, only Manchester United currently satisfy the proposed regulations.
Yet, the Chelsea team for last night’s match was comprised of almost all foreign players: Jeffrey Bruma (Dutch), Jacopo Sala (Italian), Gokhan Tore (Turkish) and the list goes on. In contrast, almost all of Aston Villa’s players were British.

So, although head honcho Frank Arnesen and his scouting team deserve a pat on the back for last night’s achievement and appear to be able to find some of the planet’s best young players, you will not see too many of them singing ‘God Save the Queen’ or wrapped in the flag of St. George.

p.s. This is not a political advertisement against immigration. We love foreigners. But Sepp Blatter and his friends believe national leagues should have a preponderance of players from that country. And Sepp et all write the rule book.

Not an Englishman in sight - Chelsea's Youth Cup winning team

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We at Footy Factor would like to thank Mark Solomon from New Jersey for submitting this article

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