2014 World Cup sheds light on benefits of player migration laws to non-European national teams

For football fans, it was a delight for major league players getting pitted against each other to represent their home nations in the 2014 World Cup. On the other hand, it also shed light on player migration legislation, which has since been relaxed thanks to a European Court of Justice ruling in 1995.

Chrysovalantis Vasilakis of the University of Warwick has reportedly found in a study of the increased globalization of soccer that by relaxing the rules on player migration endows significant benefits to those who have decided to move and for those who chose to stay. The study had looked into the distribution of talented players, of which was defined as those who played a minimum of three games for one of the top 65 national teams worldwide in a World Cup year, Vasilakis have said. The study had also taken into considering the number of players who have been employed by top clubs, the quality of each league, which is based on the quality measure of clubs playing in them.

The ruling, Vasiliakis has found, had helped foreign players to play in Europe. Before the court decision, only 6% of the talented players in European leagues were foreign nationals outside Europe. Four years later, the percentage grew to 28%. By 2010, around one-third of the top talented players in European clubs had come outside of the euro zone.

Foreign players who have played in Europe actually get an added bonus from the ruling, Businessweek said, It has been said that national teams in origin countries fare better in international competitions more than their emigrants have played in Europe's top leagues. Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile has risen 25 or more places in the 2010 FIFA rankings of national teams, Vasiliakis estimated.

This was apparently clear to almost all of the coaches for years, Businessweek said. US men's national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann said to the New York Times Magazine, "The more players we can get playing at the top levels [in Europe], the better it will be."

Tags

FIFA, European Court of Justice

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