Backlash in Italy

13 August 2009 - 02:00
By unknown

ROME - Italian football should restore foreign player quotas to ensure that domestic talent has the chance to flourish, the head of the nation's professional footballers' association (AIC) said yesterday.

ROME - Italian football should restore foreign player quotas to ensure that domestic talent has the chance to flourish, the head of the nation's professional footballers' association (AIC) said yesterday.

"Useless foreign players have been flooding our championship for ages, making club presidents spend too much and taking places from Italians, who are often better," Sergio Campana told La Gazzetta dello Sport's website (www.gazzetta.it).

"I'm going to propose the introduction of a limit on foreigners in the regulations.

"It's legally possible both for non-European Union and EU citizens. We have to go back to the past when there was a real limit on foreign players." Restrictions on EU players risk facing legal challenges over whether they breach European law on freedom of movement. - Reuters