The state of the Premier League today
Additionally, a child who lives near a border and the team in question is just across the border can play for that team—but this obviously would apply in say the Netherlands or Italy or Germany but not the UK. Now, how the EU and EEA come into this rule is that within EU/EEA nations, youth between ages of sixteen and eighteen who wish to play at the professional level can be traded.
Without EU membership (and it’s contested if the UK could retain EEA membership, because doing so under current rules would require freedom of movement between nations which the pro-Brexit supporters were adamantly against) the UK would be walled off from the benefit of this free trade of youth players provision. Not just the Premier League, mind you, but the whole of the British pro system. Again, given how many bright young players are showing up with great skills all over, this may be a real concern for the Premier League.
Of course, leaving the rigors of the EU also allows the UK and the Premier League to make up more of their own rules. There no longer would be an external force stopping the Premier League or Football Association on making rules about how many foreign players can be on a single team and if a nationalistic push arose to have more home-grown players per team, tighter regulations could be brought about to see to that, but such is pretty unlikely because pride aside, it could cut down on talent as well as diversity for the Premier League teams.
One has to presume that the Premier League teams’ scouts are eyeing the best of the home-grown young players and scooping them up with handsome contracts already, so it’s not likely they would suddenly discover scores of unknown native talent if forced to do so but instead they would just lack the greater resources of recruiting European players.
So, with Autumn upon use quite soon, it’s going to be an exciting if uncertain way to round out the year 2016 for the Premier League and many eyes will be watching closely and eagerly to see what this Fall will foretell for the future.
