6+5: Good ol’ Blatter does it again

Hassan Chamas

A comical old game is football. The world’s most popular sport has had its share of “crazy” ideas, meant for its revolutionization. Abundant attempts have been made by football’s governing body, FIFA, to alter the game for the better. Particularly ever since the organization’s charismatic and controversial president, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, embarked on his “divine” quest almost a decade ago to reform the game.

Can’t live with him, can’t live without him

You just cannot visualize a football world without Sepp. Think of any raw proposal to drive the game for the better, and good ol’ Sepp would haven beaten you to it in the blink of an eye. The guy just keeps pitching in ideas. Whether it’s about the ball, the size of the goal, the area of the pitch, up until the very boring of details, such as interfering in a referee’s job, Blatter’s name seems to burst all over the place, striking headlines covering your everyday newspaper.

Indeed, it just seems to me – and a vast majority of the football world, for that matter – that Blatter wants to implant microchips everywhere these days: The idea of Silicon plates planted inside a football and sensitive woodworks may seem appealing to a lot of us, and they’d certainly end any debate over the legitimacy of a suspicious goal. But last time I checked, wasn’t football a human game? Aren’t refereeing errors a part of what makes this sport so beautiful? Why give football this “Terminator” look only because the official disallowed an authentic goal?

Also, I understand that he’s the game’s president, but does he really have to interfere in every single aspect? Exhibit A: After the encounter between Portugal and Holland a couple of years ago at the World Cup, Sepp blasted referee Valentin Ivanov for issuing more than a dozen cards, only to eat his words later. Exhibit B: Sepp launched a campaign against Aston Villa’s Martin Taylor for tackling Arsenal’s Eduardo, breaking the Croatian’s leg in the process. Taylor was quickly dismissed and banned for three matches. End of story. So why did Blatter think that it was his God-commanding duty to interfere in the matter, stating that Taylor was not properly punished, and in the process, irritating one of the world’s most important association, the English FA?

Blatter just seems to speak his mind when he feels like it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but most ideas he presents just seem to be completely random and appear out of the blue. I don’t know what must have gotten into his head, or what was he watching for that matter, when he came out and said that women should wear tighter shorts a few years ago, nor do I know the reason behind his list of 100 top-footballers – if you still think the list is Pele’s, then you’re still dreaming my friend – that famously excluded world class players such as Italy’s Walter Zenga, Ricardo Zamora, or the innovator of modern goalkeeping, and former World Player of the Year winner Lev Yashin. For all his greatness, Pele clearly appeared as a puppet in the president’s hands. I mean, if it wasn’t for Howard Cosell, there wouldn’t be a Mohammed Ali. Would there ever be a Pele if it wasn’t for a certain Garrincha?

6+5: Could it really work?

But enough about Joseph Blatter. The purpose of this lengthy introduction is to prove that, once, every now and then, Sepp can actually come up with a good one. The man is not the subject of this article, but his “6+5” preposition, one that was adopted by FIFA last May, is. You see, for all his crazy ideas, Blatter might have hit the jackpot on this one.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the rule, it states that from the original starting eleven of any club, six must be eligible to play for the national team. For example, an English club must field at kick-off at least six players holding English citizenship, and in the process be capable of playing for the England national team.

It is no secret that club identities are in the process of becoming extinct in Europe. Amid the flow of new regulations every now and then, like the Bosman rule and Schengen laws in Europe, frontiers are quickly becoming a thing of the past and clubs are more and more transforming into “global organizations”. Add to them the Kolpak rule that allows participating countries of the Cotonou Agreement to count as “European players”, clubs are hastily becoming melting pots for players of all nationalities, and the club’s identity is rapidly being forgotten.

A look at the big teams will all but confirm this theory: Spanish giants Real Madrid contain only eight players who are born from Spanish parents, out of their possible twenty-five. At Italy’s Inter Milan, the number is only three (I am not counting foreign players who later received citizenship). What about clubs that have completely lost their identity, like Arsenal, with only a single English player in the form of Theo Walcott? Surely they’re not an English club anymore. If you ask me, they “just happen” to play in the Premier League.

But the “6+5” rule is here to put an end to that. So instead of investing millions of Euros in foreign players, clubs will have to nurture and educate their younglings and breed them into world-class footballers, in the process saving their money, acquiring fiscal stability, and more importantly, reducing the gap between the “spenders” and the “beggars”.

So who are the main advocates and supporters of this ruling? Most probably the clubs who operate the biggest academies in world football. Indeed, the likes of West Ham, FC Barcelona, and AFC Ajax who are producers of the best talent to emerge into the modern game will welcome this proposal with open arms, while others who were used to just buying talent and shipping their own elsewhere will have to bitterly accept it.

This rule if applied, will certainly bring more competition to the game, and reform a football world where the dollar sign has the last say. Teams will no longer be triumphant by their ability to purchase, but by the kind of players and nature of talent they produce. And with this rule set to be moderately applied over a period of three years, clubs in difficulties will have something to look forward to in the near future.

However, this rule is nowhere near practical. Even though it was accepted as a resolution by FIFA, the 6+5 rule has on numerous occasions been described as illegal by the European Union and was rejected by the European Parliament, with it being a clear violation of both Article 39 of the EC Treaty and the Bosman ruling, the latter two being just a handful of many.

Unless some sort of mutual ground is found between football’s governing body and the European Union, Blatter’s “6+5” will just be a declaration safely stored in FIFA’s drawers in Zurich for the time being. In a world governed by the big clubs of the now defunct G-14, “6+5” seems to be the only hope towards restoring some fairness to a game that only became accustomed to record signings and astronomical wages.