Just Liverpool News

The Man Utd manager Sir Alex Ferguson has dismissed England’s chances of winning the World Cup, and says that something needs to be done about bringing more English players through to the Premier League, and goes on to deride Liverpool for developing more Spanish youngsters than English!

“At our club I think we have always had a good record of bringing young English talent through.

“At the moment we have players like Danny Welbeck and Tom Cleverley coming through.

“Welbeck has played a number of senior games and Cleverley definitely has what it takes to become a Manchester United player and he is doing very well on loan at Watford.

“Even Arsenal are starting to bring one or two young English players through.

“But then you look at Liverpool. I am told that 70 players played for their reserve team last season and that over 30 of them were Spanish. That’s an amazing number.

“They will definitely struggle to meet UEFA’s requirements with that kind of Spanish influence.”

Ferguson then quoted some interesting figures about how many English players were competing in the Champions League, compared even to Scotsman! But he said that the Brazilians were the best represented, and therefore Brazil were much more likely to win the World Cup.

“I just can’t see beyond Brazil as World Cup winners.

“The players they’ve got – and the players they can bring in – are just so impressive.

“As a nation they supply an unbelievable amount of top players.

“I think there were about 103 Brazilians playing in the Champions League last season, with only 15 Englishmen. In fact, there were more Scots in the Champions League than Englishmen. Can you believe that?

“When Brazil played England last week their odds were 11/10 to win. For me, that was the bet of the century.”

For this reason Ferguson supports the UEFA plan to introduce a quota system so that English clubs are forced to develop more homegrown talent than concentrating on cheaper foreigners.

“I don’t think England would ever suffer like Scotland because this is a nation of 50 million people.

“But the fact is that the small number of English players competing in the Champions League is down to the way the Premier League has developed.

“The question is, at what point will the Premier League realise that they will have to take steps to ensure that more English players feature in their own competition?

“UEFA are trying to work something out about quotas and that is the right idea.”

It sounds to me that he is talking sense, and maybe it is time to introduce a policy of at least six ENGLISH players in each team, instead of “England-developed”.

Who agrees with Fergie?