Controversial plans for Premier League ‘B’ teams continue

A massive shake up in English soccer has been proposed by the Chairman of the Football Association Greg Dyke, as England aim to produce more homegrown talent.

The FA commission has released an 80-page report on how to develop more elite players for the English national team and top of the list of proposals is allowing Premier League sides to run ‘B’ teams in a competitive professional division. The report claims that young players would thrive from being in a competitive environment from an early age and has looked at the Spanish and German leagues who both have similar setups where reserve teams from the big clubs compete in the lower tiers of their soccer pyramid.

During the 2012-13 Premier League season only 32 percent of players were eligible to represent the English national team, as the number of foreign players in the PL continues to spiral out of control and many believe that will impact the elite pool of players England has to choose from in the future. The England commission was set up to try and help with this issue and consists of Roger Burden, Greg Clarke, Rio Ferdinand, Dario Gradi, Glenn Hoddle, Roy Hodgson, Ritchie Humphreys, Danny Mills and Howard Wilkinson.

This debate over B-teams has caused uproar across England over the past few days as prominent figures within the game have had their say on whether or not it will have the desired impact to help the fortunes of the national team in the future. Opinion remains divided as to whether this extreme step will actually benefit anyone. Many teams in the lower league are questioning the ‘sporting integrity’ of the proposal and others are stating the history of smaller teams from League One and League Two (the third and fourth tiers of English soccer) are being put in jeopardy.

How can Roy Hodgson get more elite-level players to chose from for England?

Also in the report from the FA are proposals which aim to ban non-European Union players from playing outside of the top flight, having strategic loan partnerships with a feeder club set up and reducing the number of non-homegrown players in the PL. Several PL teams such as Stoke City, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur have already thrown their backing behind the plans but Dyke is likely to need at least 15 PL teams to back the notion, and then the Football League to okay the ideas when they meet in July, to put the plans into place. If successful, the new tier of English soccer with 10 PL B-team and 10 lower league sides will commence play from the 2016-17 campaign onwards.

Dyke has talked about drastic changes since taking up his role at the FA last year and this latest report on the state of the game suggests he and the members of his committee believe these steps are needed if the Three Lions are to elevate themselves amongst the world’s elite. Add into all of this that the Premier League chose not to be part of Dyke’s committee, due to their own U-23 league they are setting up and their own plans for Elite Player Development, and you have  avast concoction of ideas clashing at the elite level of soccer in England.

There are many different tactics which can be used to do that, however creating a whole new tier for Premier League B-teams has captured the headlines. The proposal states that B-teams will consist of players under the age of 23, they will not be allowed to advance past League One or allowed to enter the FA Cup or League Cup and the initial new tier would be set up in between the Conference (fifth tier) and League Two.

It is a novel idea that aims to help with the development of England’s most talented youngsters. Let’s sit back and see how this one plays out but why not try something different if the current model isn’t working?

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