Vote Leave FACTS: UK Football Will Be Stronger Outside EU

Football transfers are currently stifled by the EU and leaving would actually help the global transfer market.

We could then have amazing footballers from all over the world and from Europe as well playing in the Premiership and other leagues.

The £350 million sent into the EU black hole every week where it is swallowed up and never seen again, could also be used for building up our own youth teams to International standard.

The BSE assertions are based on the flawed assumption that the UK would require foreign national footballers to have a visa.

• When the UK votes to leave the EU, we will take back control of our migration policy from the EU. We will be able to decide the conditions under which footballers will be able to work in the UK.
• The UK will be able to select the best and the brightest without discriminating on the grounds of nationality against non-EU citizens as at present.
• The UK could also exclude criminals, which it cannot at present do so because of EU law.

The European Court has prevented the UK from introducing rules to support young British players. Both the FA and UEFA consider this to be damaging.

• In December 1995, the European Court ruled that the EU Treaties forbid ‘rules laid down by sporting associations under which, in matches in competitions which they organize, football clubs may field only a limited number of professional players who are nationals of other Member States’. This restricts the FA’s ability to introduce rules to support young British players.
• In December 1997, the English team was ranked fourth in the world. Today, it is ranked ninth.
• UEFA has said: ‘One of the biggest challenges facing European football is that, since the European Court of Justice’s Bosman ruling of 1995 and the rapid growth of television revenue, the richest clubs have been able to stockpile the best players, making it easier for them to dominate both national and European competitions. At the same time, clubs have fewer incentives to train their own players or give a genuine chance to young players from their region. This trend is exacerbated by the increasingly unreliable financial compensation for training young players who leave early, and the ability of many European clubs to ‘poach’ young players from the age of 16 from across the European Union’.
• The Chairman of the Football Association, Greg Dyke, has said there are not enough English players, especially in the Champions League.