Football League Turkeys Vote For a Premier League Christmas

A Handshake With a Gun to its Head

The price for a young footballer’s future has been set. For a player between the ages of nine and eleven, a Premier League club will now pay a compensation fee of just £3,000 for each year of their development. The annual fee for those aged twelve to sixteen will range from £12,500 to £40,000. These are the terms of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), an agreement reached this morning between the Premier League and the Football League after forty-six clubs voted it into existence.

Defenders of the Football League’s position will claim it was a vote taken under duress. The Premier League effectively held a gun to its head, withholding a £5m payment intended to help fund youth development until the lower-league clubs acquiesced. Faced with that ultimatum, they blinked. Now, the consequences of that decision will begin to unfold. The very financial model that sustains many smaller clubs, the development and sale of players, has been gutted.

The End of Geography

The new rules do not just slash compensation fees. They also abolish the geographical boundaries that prevent clubs from signing players from outside a ninety-minute travel radius. The market for talent is now truly national, and the biggest clubs can now circle like vultures, picking off the best young players from any academy in the country for a song. The idea that a local lad might come through the ranks at his hometown club before making a big-money move that sustains his former team for years now feels like a quaint fantasy from a bygone era.

It is difficult to see why many smaller clubs would continue to run youth academies at all. Why invest scarce resources into developing players only to have them serve as little more than a low-cost feeder system for the elite? For every one player who succeeds after being swept up by a Premier League giant, scores will not. The system is notoriously imprecise at identifying future stars at fifteen or sixteen. With no financial disincentive to stop them gambling, the biggest clubs will hoard young talent. Those who fail to make the grade, after years of being told they were destined for the top, will be cast aside. Some will find their level lower down, but many will simply drift away from the game altogether.

The Great Lie Repeats Itself

The predictable justification for this entire enterprise is the supposed benefit to the England national team. Better coaching and facilities for the most talented youngsters, the argument goes, will produce a higher standard of player for the country. This narrative should sound familiar. It is the same one that was deployed to sell the formation of the Premier League back in 1992.

Two decades on, it is impossible to argue that the Premier League has been a net benefit for England. Top clubs have shown a lukewarm enthusiasm for the national cause, viewing international football as an inconvenience in their packed calendars. This latest plan is just another power grab hidden behind a thin veil of public relations. Just as the FA was supine in 1992, the Football League clubs have now hoisted themselves by their own petard.

A growing sense of disillusionment is palpable. This vote, coming on top of recent comments from Liverpool’s Ian Ayre about individual television rights and talk of ending promotion and relegation, adds to a feeling that the game no longer belongs to its supporters. It is a public relations disaster, but the Premier League gives the impression it genuinely does not care, calculating that any fans it sheds in England will be more than replaced by its growing global audience.

The European Super League now looks more likely than not. The final days of football as a single, unified sport feel as if they are upon us. The most depressing part is the likely absence of any significant protest. Perhaps the question is no longer whether to stand and fight, but whether to be part of the problem or part of the solution.