‘Pendatang Asing’

The English Community Shield match between Arsenal and Manchester City saw only three English players started in the list of the first elevens for both teams. All three were from Arsenal, unfortunately. The love of clubs towards foreign players is an unwanted disease. The Writer here is not talking about the English Premier League (EPL) only, but also on majority leagues in the world. However it is easier to put the focus more on the EPL as it is the most followed league in the world and most of readers will be more familiar with the names that The Writer is going to mention after this. The title above is a translated Malay term which refers to foreigners as The Writer wants the readers to feel uneasy about the bad impact that excessive foreign invasion can bring to any nations, be it from football perspective or other matters. 

England’s World Cup performance in Brazil recently indicated the problems which are affected from having a large majority of foreign players in the English Premier League. The failure can also largely be blamed on the wrong tactics by the England manager, Roy Hodgson, but who can really blame him? His choices of world-class English players are very limited and he had to shoulder the expected failure tags even before the World Cup started. Hodgson didn’t have any choice of world-class centre back after the retirement of John Terry. That’s because most EPL clubs buy big names from overseas to play in that position. Young players don’t get enough chance to impress.

EPL clubs also don’t invest heavily for their academy. They are more interested in paying for ready-made English young talents from the lower leagues and then put them in their reserve. The outcome is the same. Those young English players will never have the chance too. Only real wonderkids such as Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley, and Luke Shaw get the chance to shine because of their obvious and rare talents. Others young hopeful players’ talents are wasted and it is a sad situation.

The same goes to the Malaysian football. The influx of foreign footballers into the Malaysian Super League (MSL) is having a bad impact on the choices available to the new Malaysian national team coach, Dollah Salleh. The most particular position which is giving Dollah a great headache is the striker. Most MSL clubs recruit foreign players in the striker’s position because this is the position that will differentiate between the good and the poor teams in the MSL. The margin in this league is too small and teams which have strikers who is the most prolific and can win matches with their goals are usually at the top of the league at the end of the day. Having too many foreign strikers blocks the chance of Malaysian strikers to shine and this will result in the national team to have very little choices of reliable strikers. Having little reliable strikers affect Malaysia’s chance to succeed in Asian football competitions, let alone the World Cup!

Looking back at English football’s current situation, The Writer is suddenly aware of the existence of the only English club that has all English players in the team. That club is Hartlepool United in the English Second Division. This is a positive sign for English football, albeit it is only one club from the several hundreds in total. This situation can also be seen from Spain where a club named Athletic Bilbao in the Spanish La Liga, who only has Spanish players in their team from the first day of their establishment. Athletic Bilbao only buys Spanish players and no foreigners are allowed to be part of the playing squad. Wow, that’s special!