Fabio Capello and England's Dilemma: Only 34 Percent of EPL Players Are English

With the World Cup merely weeks away, increasing amounts of column inches are being dedicated to who may, should, or will be selected in Fabio Capello’s World Cup squad.

Seemingly any English player producing even a half-decent display is met with cries of "get him on the plane!”

Questions are raised as to whether Capello should stick by the established names who performed well during the successful qualifying campaign or seek out new, potentially in-form players who might fall into the "secret weapon" category.

But, just how many players are out there for Capello to choose from?

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Statistics have revealed that just one third of players who have started at least one game in the Premier League this season have been English.

More specifically of the 453 players to have started at least one game in the English top flight this season, only 155 of them have been English, clocking in at just 34 percent.

The figures hold up in another examination: in the recent Gameweek 34 of the Premier League, in which all 20 clubs played, 89 of the 271 (33 percent) players used were English.

Comparison to other major European leagues does not make it any easier to read.

Spain’s La Liga sees Spaniards make up two thirds of all players to have started a game in La Liga this season (65 percent), almost double that of the Premier League.

Italy is not far behind, with 57 percent of players starting a game in Serie A this season being Italian.

Germany finds itself halfway between England and Italy with 45 percent of players starting a game in the Bundesliga this season being German.

Brits Abroad

To further press home the disparity between England and the other top leagues in Europe one can look at the number of English players plying their trade abroad in these top leagues. Or, more to the point, the lack of Englishman abroad.

Only Jermaine Pennant and David Beckham have appeared in either La Liga, Serie A, or the Bundesliga this season whereas several Spaniards, Italians, and Germans feature in teams across the continent’s top divisions.

England have certainly trailed each of the above nations on the international scene for some time now, but is the smaller pool of players, both domestic and foreign-based, necessarily to blame?

BBC Study

Two years ago the BBC published this article on their website presenting similar statistics for the 2007/2008 season.

Back then the percentage of English players starting in the Premier League was the same as it is now, 34 percent.

The BBC article quoted Fabio Capello as saying that he hoped that the percentage would rise, that “next season is not 34 percent but 40 percent,” believing that it would be “better for English football and for me.”

Sadly this has not been the case.

The figure has remained identical two years at 34 percent.

Capello had hoped for an increase by the very next year.

It did not materialise.

And it still has not done so as we near the end of the 2009/2010 season.

But is it important?

Blunt and Misleading

The Premier League doesn’t think so. The same article on the BBC quoted a Premier League statement iterating that "merely looking at numbers of England players in the Premier League is a blunt and misleading measure as to how well the national team should be doing."

What the statistics do lead discussion to is the long-debated “quantity vs. quality” argument.

The argument includes such schools of thought as recognising the English national side’s struggles in the 1970’s despite a league with virtually no foreigners barring other British and Irish players.

The percentage of top flight players available to the likes of Alf Ramsey, Don Revie, and Ron Greenwood would have been well over double what Capello has available to him nowadays, but still England failed to qualify for both the 1974 and 1978 World Cups.

2008 saw the first ever all-English Champions League Final when Manchester United took on Chelsea in Moscow and 10 of the 22 starters in that match were English.

As a judge of quality the biggest club game in Europe should have proved a high enough standard, but yet all of those 10 players were on holiday that summer after England and failed to qualify for Euro 2008.

Barring that disastrous qualification failure (blip or otherwise) England have succeeded in qualifying for their fourth consecutive World Cup.

Fabio Capello’s side breezed through qualification for South Africa suggesting that whilst the quantity may be a problem, there is more than enough quality to work with, despite the seemingly ever increasing proportions of foreigners in the Premier League.

There seems little hope for the immediate future that Capello will get his wish and the number of English players in the Premier League will increase.

The transfer market for domestic players is as inflated as ever although clubs will perhaps start to shy away from the foreign market given the current financial state and weakness of the pound against the euro.

FIFA’s much vaunted “6 + 5” rule whereby teams would be forced to start each game with at least six players eligible for the country’s national side has been rejected by the European Parliament and labelled illegal by the EU based on the proposed law directly discriminating on the grounds of nationality.

But is an increased number of English players in the Premier League essential for a successful national side? 

Would an increase of 10 percent suddenly see England reaching finals and winning penalty shoot-outs as regularly as Germany?

On the other hand, can England still even dream of competing at an international level whilst still producing such a comparatively paltry number of players from which to choose from?

Or maybe it’s all incidental, as a wise man once said (ok, it was Homer Simpson), “Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14 percent of people know that.”

*All statistics correct up to 14th April 2010.