Homegrown Quotas

ARTICLE BY MATTY

The more it gets brought up, the more I realize that while I don’t have that much knowledge on homegrown quotas, they’re brought up enough that a general guide on how they work would be useful to have for any future reference. With that being said, let’s dive into how exactly these homegrown rules work, both domestically and continentally, how there’s a difference in classification of homegrown talent between those two leagues, and how this affects squad planning. I also might loop in how homegrown players have become more fungible due to the rise of PSR in recent years, and how being a homegrown player allows a club to find a loophole in PSR and make any sale of a homegrown player be registered as pure profit for the selling club. Did you understand any of that? Is my girlfriend’s ADHD affecting me yet? I don’t know, let’s continue.

At the Premier League level, the rule is that there must be at least eight homegrown players in a full 25-man squad. This means 17 players are allowed to be non-homegrown. Managing these quotas has proven to be rather tricky at times, especially with the PSR loophole, and it’s resulted in some players like Tom Hill (former academy player) being registered just to fill one of the eight slots.

Currently the requirements for being a homegrown player in the Premier League is that the player must have spent at least 3 years playing for an English or Welsh team, whether it’s the academy or first team, before the player turns 21. This is why players bought at the age of 17 or 18, such as Conor Bradley, Stefan Bajcetic, Giovanni Leoni eventually, and others do qualify as homegrown under Premier League rules. This is also why Jeremie Frimpong qualifies as homegrown despite having not played in England since he was 19; he played for City since the age of 6 before his move to Celtic. Lastly, Andy Robertson does not qualify as being homegrown because Scottish clubs are not counted as being part of England and he grew up playing in the Scottish leagues before making his way to Hull City.

Homegrown players, because of the quota being in place, have extra value in a team. Not only are they players developed by England’s own, they’re also quite valuable assets for squad registration. Oftentimes the reason English players are sold within the Premier League for inflated sums of money is because of the homegrown quota. Instead of filling one of 17 slots, they get to fit 1 of 8, and more crucially, that allows them to bring in a foreign player that might not have been attainable otherwise. This is how Harry Maguire gets sold for £80 million, or how Scott Carson gets to ride the bench at City for years despite never playing a game. Furthermore, if a player is under 21, they do not have to be registered at all. Leoni for all we know might not be registered in the team whatsoever. Rio and Nyoni definitely aren’t.

One last thing about the homegrown rules in England, and this pertains to squad registration in particular. There are only 17 spots allowed to be allocated to foreign players. That number does not change. Every homegrown player added to a squad adds to that number, up to 25. Teams, if they wish to do so, can choose to forego homegrown players and not fill those slots. That just means instead of 25 players, they have 21 or 22 total players registered. Not ideal, but if a manager wants to do things that way, they can. Liverpool last season had 7 homegrown players in the team. This meant they could register 24 players total, and only 24. Currently the only homegrown players in Liverpool’s team are Freddie Woodman, Joe Gomez, Jeremie Frimpong, Conor Bradley, Curtis Jones and Stefan Bajcetic. This means only 23 players at maximum can be registered this season.

In the Champions League, more distinctions are made regarding homegrown players, and therefore more categories are introduced. In regard to homegrown players, there are two Lists instead of the catch-all that the Premier League uses. List A is for players who came from that specific club’s academy. Any player in List A has to be developed exclusively by Liverpool and Liverpool only for at least 3 years from the ages of 15-21. List B is for players who were developed in England but not exclusively at Liverpool. These rules, being more restrictive, meant that Liverpool could only register 22 players for the Champions League squad. Under these rules, Liverpool only have five homegrown players. Bradley and Jones are List A homegrown players developed by Liverpool. Frimpong, Woodman and Gomez are List B players developed by City, Tottenham and Fulham, respectively. This is why Chiesa missed out. However, this is also why, had Marc Guehi signed, that Chiesa would likely be registered. Every homegrown player added means that another player can then be registered until you reach the 25-player maximum. Rio Ngumoha does not count as a homegrown player right now, neither does Leoni. They had to be registered if they wanted to play any minutes, which meant other players had to miss out.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about how homegrown players have become assets clubs want to sell in recent years. PSR allows for a maximum loss of £105 million over the course of three years, the loss essentially being equivalent to net spend. In order to stay clear of violating PSR, big spenders such as Chelsea, as well as smaller clubs trying to compete with the big boys like Newcastle and Villa, will often sell their best homegrown talent in order to cook the books.

Homegrown talent, according to PSR, is registered as immediate pure profit rather than the amortization of profit over a number of years. Especially seeing as most foreign transfers are now paid through installments rather than up front cash, you can understand the appeal of getting the immediate cash relief obtained through the sale of a homegrown player. However, this means less and less truly homegrown players, brought up through a club’s academy, get to actually play for that club. This is how Elliot Anderson gets sold to Nottingham Forest when Newcastle really didn’t want to sell him. This is how Jacob Ramsey goes to Newcastle when Villa didn’t really want to sell him. Clubs in danger of violating PSR will oftentimes sell their best homegrown players in an act of desperation, hoping to stay clear of the trouble.

In conclusion, homegrown rules are complicated, dependent on each league a club finds themselves in, and oftentimes the classification of being homegrown means an inflated price tag and a possible weapon for clubs to escape being punished for their own mistakes. Now I’m off to the gym, followed by a date night. Until next time, gentlemen.