English Premier League: The Best in the World...but What About the Future?

Being a football fan since the 90s, I dreamed of an Arsenal team which can be named amongst the best in the world, to have the same touch of class with teams like AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Inter Milan etc.

Trust me, in Hong Kong (where I was born), throughout the 90s, the Premiership was a very special league, but whenever we talk about the best teams in the world, Spanish or Italian teams came to our minds first.

I still remember playing Championship Manager 3 back in about 1999, I always chose those foreign teams ahead of the Premiership teams because they simply had the best players.

The likes of Baggio, Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Carlos, Rivaldo, Cannavaro, Raul etc. The premiership had names like Beckham and Giggs, Bergkamp and Zola etc. but any of you I think would say, the best of the best seldom coming to the EPL.

I still remember, Fiorentina and Parma, who were like the teams striving for fourth place in Serie A, had better teams than arguably Arsenal, Chelsea AND Liverpool at that time.

Players like Batistuta, Rui Costa, Thuram, Buffon, Ortega, Crespo, Di Livio, Veron etc. Those are big big players!

That is not mentioning Sven's Lazio and Capello's Roma as well who had Totti, Nedved, Nesta, Candela... the list is endless. Serie A was the league to be in.

Come Football Manager 2008, what does the Italian teams have now? Kaka obviously, Pirlo maybe, Ibrahimovic maybe, Gattuso a very big maybe.

Barcelona obviously is like Beverley Hills for footballers and boasts the best of the best.

But this time round, I realised that most of the highest-valued and sought after players are indeed playing in the Premier League. Cristiano Ronaldo, Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard, Fabregas, Ferdinand, Terry, Drogba, Essien, Torres, even bloody Downing is valued higher than most key players in the other leagues!

What has changed so quickly? Why have Italian teams suddenly dropped out of the picture? How about the likes of Fiorentina and Parma? Valencia and Deportivo may I say? 

I think most importantly, obviously, the influx of hundreds of foreign players and foreign managers, the amount of money the EPL are making compared to La Liga and Serie A, and also the general belief of the British clubs that they are better than those teams in Europe.

Four teams in the last eight of the Champions League, with United beating Roma for god knows how may times, Liverpool hammering Inter and Juve three years ago, Arsenal outplaying Milan, Madrid and Juve a couple of seasons ago, and Chelsea beating Valencia and Barca etc.

There is an argument that finally we are the teams that others are dreaming to be. We also have teams like Tottenham and Everton, even Pompey and Villa who are capable of playing any big teams around Europe as well, ok, they might not beat them but they won't get beaten easily in my opinion.

I hope this period will continue for the EPL, but we should know that nothing lasts forever in football. It wouldn't surprise me to see maybe La Liga taking over after 10 years, or Serie A storming back as well, since seriously, some of their youngsters can beat the English ones quite easily.

When you see the amount of foreign youngsters in the EPL, it is frightening. The likes of Montolivo of Fiorentina, Bojan of Barca, Silva of Valencia, Soldado of Madrid, these are domestic players that the EPL don't produce anymore.

We have to take advantage of this golden period for the Premier League before it slips out of our hands. The F.A. might actually have to think of something intelligent and practical in order to achieve that...

As bad as this might sound, I think one of the ways to do that is to ban the amount of foreigners in first teams, or even the squads in the EPL.

I know my team Arsenal will suffer a lot from that, that is true. But looking at Fiorentina against Everton, their team was mostly made up of Italians, and they were fantastic in my opinion.

I know there is no ban in Italy or Spain about this, but their lack of money actually meant they had to build from bringing domestic players through. I really hope teams in the UK can do that too and then maybe, just maybe, we can bring the World Cup and Euros back to the home of football... finally.