Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has expressed his desire to get rid of work permits for non-EU players after he Frenchmen revealed that he failed to sign Angel Di Maria when he was just 17.
The work permit rules enforced by the Government and the Premier League has been call into question this month after Arsenal’s attempt to sign £15 million Villarreal defender Gabriel. He has been denied a work permit but the club are confident that he will be granted on appeal, despite fitting close to none of the criteria.
Leicester City’s record signing, Croatian Andrej Kramaric, failed his first work permit hearing but was granted one on appeal.
According to inbrief.co.uk “Work permits will only be issued to international football players of the highest calibre who will be able to make a significant contribution to the development of the game of football in the United Kingdom at the highest level.
“A player must have player for his country in at least 75% of its competitive A team matches of which he was available for selection, during the two years preceding the date of the application The player’s country must be at or above 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings when averaged over the two years preceding the date of the application.”
Gabriel has never played for his national team or any of Brazil’s junior sides, prompting Wenger to say the chances of the signing him is “50-50”.
There are proposals to change the rules this summer that would change the process. It would see the GBE hearing being abolished, the threshold of international appearances to 30 per cent over the last two years but their national team need to be ranked in the top 50 in the FIFA world rankings.
The rules are in place to protect the home grown talent. When asked what needs to be changed, Wenger told the independent “Ideally, it would be to open it completely. Anyone can come in. Because at the moment we are in a position where they force you to spend money on a player who sometimes you have identified.
“We had identified Di Maria when he was 17. We wanted him to come here. So he goes to Portugal, from Portugal he goes to Spain. Why? Because he could not get a work permit [in the UK]. That means you can only get him to England once he is worth a huge amount of money.
“[Lionel] Messi [another Arsenal target in his teens] is a different example because he was in Barcelona already from a very young age. But a player like Di Maria, he left [Argentina] at 18 years of age. We saw him in an international competition.
“What does it mean if at the end of the day he comes into the country anyway, just for a huge amount of money [he cost Manchester United £58.7m this summer] and that is the only difference? And who do you pay this huge amount of money to? A club like Real Madrid? They don’t need the money.
“At the end of the day we have to be conscious of that. There’s two ways to approach the solution of the academies. The first is you close completely the borders of the country and you play only with English players.
Source: DSG
