Takumi Minamino and the Champions League Squad Conundrum
The Champions League is back sooner than you think…
During an 18-month period in which fans of Liverpool Football Club have had an awful lot to get excited about, it is quite remarkable that virtually none of that excitement has been generated by the announcement of major new signings for the club.
In the 2018 summer transfer window Liverpool added four first-team players to their senior squad, spending upwards of £150 million on transfer fees in the process. However, to almost everybody’s surprise they largely stayed out of the market in the winter and summer transfer windows of 2019. Although Liverpool still brought in two reserve choice goalkeepers (Adrián and Andy Lonergan) and two highly-rated youngsters (Harvey Elliott and Sepp van den Berg) last summer, the ‘big’ transfers that could have reinforced a European Cup-winning squad never materialised.
It was therefore much less surprising that Liverpool’s signing of the Japanese international forward Takumi Minamino[1] this winter was greeted with such enthusiasm. Liverpool have an outstanding recent record in the transfer market, so given that their fans have already seen Minamino scoring and assisting at Anfield earlier in the season (albeit against Liverpool), the ludicrously low transfer fee of around £7.25 million makes his arrival look like a genuine coup for the club.
Notwithstanding the fans’ welcome, Liverpool’s addition of Minamino means the club has a decision to make when it comes to determining its squad for the latter half of the 2019–20 season in the UEFA Champions League (“UCL”). All clubs in the UCL must submit updated squads to UEFA by midnight on 3 February, shortly after the 2020 winter transfer window slams shut.
Although the manager, Jürgen Klopp, prefers to work with a smaller group of players, in the past few seasons Liverpool have signed predominantly overseas players while allowing a number of English counterparts to leave. Liverpool have not signed an English player for their senior squad since bringing in Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Arsenal at the beginning of the 2017–18 season; that’s now almost three seasons ago. The net result of these comings and goings is that Liverpool’s squad composition has evolved to the point where they must now walk an administrative tightrope in the UCL.
This piece examines the rules and limitations set by UEFA that will govern Liverpool’s decision-making when integrating Takumi Minamino into their UCL squad in time for their Round of 16 fixture against Atlético Madrid. I will also look at how those same UEFA rules — which are always overlooked by the wider media when reporting on transfer rumours — could influence Liverpool’s transfer activity ahead of the 2020–21 season.
Using newsworthy examples from this season, I will also briefly demonstrate how a couple of Europe’s other top clubs and players have been impacted by UEFA’s rules on squad size and composition.
Abolishing the Cup-Tie Rule
Firstly, I will quickly remark on how it is even possible for Liverpool to include Takumi Minamino in their UCL squad during the second half of the 2019–20 season.
Ahead of the start of the 2018–19 season UEFA phased out its ‘cup-tie’ rule, which prevented players from appearing for more than one club in the same European club competition in the same season[2]. In 2017–18, the last season that UEFA’s cup-tie rule was in force, it stopped Philippe Coutinho from playing for FC Barcelona in the later rounds of their UCL campaign. This was because prior to Coutinho’s transfer to Barcelona in January 2018, he had already played for Liverpool in UCL group stage matches earlier that same season.
However, the end to the cup-tie rule means that Takumi Minamino will not be affected in the same manner that Coutinho was in 2018. Although Minamino has already played for RB Salzburg in this season’s UCL group stage, he will be allowed to appear in later rounds of the same competition for Liverpool once the UCL restarts in February.
UCL Squad Selection
Minamino’s sheer eligibility is important because even without the cup-tie rule, UEFA still has other regulations relating to who may play in its club competitions. In particular, UEFA obliges clubs that qualify for the UCL to register a pool of players from which they may select their matchday squads. This pool is split into two lists — called List A and List B — and eligibility for each list is subject to players fulfilling certain criteria.
List A
While UEFA allows clubs to register up to 25 players for inclusion in their core Champions League squad (“List A”), for matches covering the 2019–20 UCL group stage Liverpool’s List A squad contained only 22 players.
By way of comparison, Manchester City (despite their virtually unlimited resources) and Juventus (despite not including Mario Mandžukić and Emre Can) also selected only 22 players for their respective List A squads.
Ahead of the UCL Round of 16, clubs may make changes to their List A squads with the addition or replacement of up to three players. In Liverpool’s case, Takumi Minamino will surely be one such change. But if Liverpool can select up to 25 players on List A, why can’t he fill one of their three vacant spots? And if he has to replace someone on List A, who will the unlucky player be?
List A Rules
The answer to the first question can be found by diving into the current Regulations of the UEFA Champions League[3]. The rules, set out in Articles 43 to 45 of the regulations, are reasonably straightforward, but careful consideration may be required when applying them to the circumstances of certain players.
The List A rules can be summarised as follows:
1. Clubs can select up to 25 players for inclusion on List A, with each selected player being designated as either a Free player or a Locally Trained player. Clubs are not obliged to fill every space on List A.
2. 17 spaces may be given to what I have termed “Free” players. These spots are open to every player in a team’s squad, so occupants of these spaces can be either Locally Trained players (see below) or — more usually at the top clubs — players from overseas who spent their early careers in the youth academy of a club in their home country.
3. The other eight spots are exclusively reserved for two sub-categories of “Locally Trained” players: those who are the product of their club’s own youth academy system (“Club Trained”), and those who came through the academy of another club in the same domestic association as their current club (“Association Trained”).
4. Of the eight Locally Trained players, not more than four can be players who are Association Trained. However, all eight Locally Trained players may be Club Trained.
5. If a club needs to register more than eight players who would ordinarily qualify as Locally Trained, the extras will need to be designated as Free players, assuming there is still space within the 17-player cap on Free players.
6. As such, if a club has maxed out on its allowances of 17 Free players and four Association Trained players, the only way the club can get to a full complement of 25 players on List A is by naming four Club Trained players.
By setting the rules like this, UEFA gives an advantage to those teams that include more Locally Trained players in their List A squads. However, at the top level of European football, getting Locally Trained players — and particularly Club Trained players — into a UCL squad remains easier said than done.
The complication introduced by the two types of Locally Trained players also explains why Liverpool, Manchester City and Juventus (and other clubs) have not filled their 25-player allowance on List A.
The Impact of Locally Trained Players on List A
To qualify as Locally Trained for List A, a player must fall into one of two sub-categories, each of which relates to where a player spent their formative years as a professional.
“Club Trained” players are those who spent at least three complete seasons with their current club between the ages of 15 and 21 (or the end of the season in which the player turns 21). Classic examples of players in this category include Harry Kane of Tottenham Hotspur and FC Bayern’s Thomas Müller.
Because there is an explicit exclusion of any nationality requirement in UEFA’s rules[4], you may be surprised to learn that Angeliño, Manchester City’s backup left back, also qualifies as Club Trained. It doesn’t matter at all that he is a Spanish player who trained at an English academy, or even that he has transferred from City to PSV Eindhoven and back again. What matters is that Angeliño spent three seasons in Manchester City’s youth system by the end of the season in which he turned 21, and is back at City now. This season he is the only Club Trained player in their 2019–20 UCL squad (I’ll get to Phil Foden later).
Similarly, should the Dutch defender Nathan Aké return to Chelsea, he would do so as a Club Trained player because he was previously at the Blues for five years before turning 21.
“Association Trained” players are those who, between the ages of 15 and 21 (or the end of the season in which they turned 21), were signed to another club in the same domestic association as their current club. One such example here would be Ross Barkley of Chelsea, who spent his formative years at another English club, Everton. Raheem Sterling has Association Trained player status at Manchester City because he only joined them aged 20 but had he stayed at Liverpool — for whom he played for five years from the age of 15 — Sterling would be a Club Trained player for the Reds.
From an English perspective, the midfielder Eric Dier is an oddity since he is NOT able to be categorised as Association Trained. Although he was born in England and is a full international for the country of his birth, Dier grew up in Portugal and only transferred to Tottenham Hotspur from Sporting CP at the age of 20. As he didn’t spend three years at an English club between the ages of 15 and 21, Dier can only be included in Tottenham’s UCL squad as a Free player.
So, What Makes a Free Player?
If a player doesn’t fulfil either of the Locally Trained player criteria detailed above, or if a club has already designated the maximum number of Locally Trained players on List A, then there are 17 spots on List A available for Free players.
As I have already briefly mentioned, at Europe’s top clubs most Free players will be full internationals who, in those crucial years between 15 and 21, played their football in a country that is different to the domestic association of their current club. The examples are endless here but Ousmane Dembélé of FC Barcelona, who trained at clubs in France and Germany and now plays in Spain, is a classic Free player.
In this area, another peculiarity for British clubs is that while the UK is (for the time being) one country in most international affairs, for UEFA’s purposes the football associations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are entirely distinct from one another. As such, Andrew Robertson of Liverpool is not Association Trained, and is instead a Free player, since he played in Scotland for Queen’s Park and Dundee United until the age of 20 before making his move south.
Let us now sum up Takumi Minamino’s status. As a Japanese international aged 25, moving to a club in England after spending his early career at clubs in Japan and Austria, it is clear that Liverpool will have to designate Minamino as a Free player on List A. Since he cannot be categorised as a Locally Trained player, Minamino cannot take up one of the three available spaces currently available on Liverpool’s List A. He must instead replace one of the 17 Free players currently included on List A.
Fitting Minamino onto List A
With all that in mind, let’s look at Liverpool’s current UCL List A, as registered for the first half of the 2019–20 season.
As I have said, Liverpool have only named 22 players on List A. There are couple of surprising boys included, and one HUGE name missing. Have you spotted him yet?
You will see that Liverpool have used their full allowance of 17 Free players. 14 of them are ‘typical’ Free players; i.e. they are internationals who did not spend at least three years at English clubs between the ages of 15 and 21. There are three other Free players that are somewhat unusual, for reasons that I will explore below.
We can deduce that one of these ‘unusual’ Free players must have been eligible to be categorised as Association Trained. This is because Liverpool have five players on List A who meet the relevant Association Trained criteria. However, since we know that not more than four can be formally designated as Association Trained, one of the five must be assigned Free player status instead.
While neither Liverpool nor UEFA details exactly how players have been categorised on List A, my presumption is that the spare Association Trained player given Free player status will be the backup-to-the-backup goalkeeper Andy Lonergan. It is also Lonergan who, I suspect, will be replaced by Takumi Minamino on List A in the second half of the 2019/20 season.
The primary reason for singling out Andy Lonergan is that while Liverpool required him to provide goalkeeping cover during the first half of the season[5], there is simply less of a need for his services now. Alisson Becker has recovered from the calf injury he suffered on the opening day of the season, and academy ‘keeper Caoimhín Kelleher is fit after undergoing wrist surgery in pre-season. Together with Adrián, these three should be all the goalkeepers that Liverpool require for the second half of this UCL season.
Another reason why Lonergan will probably be the unlucky spare is that the other four Association Trained players in Liverpool’s List A squad — Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain — are essential outfield players. None of these four would have been designated as a Free player if it meant they risked making way for Takumi Minamino.
This calculation will change in the event that Liverpool allows Caoimhín Kelleher depart on loan in the current transfer window. If that was the case, Liverpool would be more likely to want to keep Andy Lonergan in its UCL squad. However, since Lonergan and Kelleher fall into different categories of player (I deal with Kelleher further down this piece), keeping Lonergan on List A as a Free player would mean the club would need to sacrifice one of its other unusual List A players instead.
Other List A Anomalies
Turning to those guys then, the two other players who stand out for their inclusion on Liverpool’s List A are the forward Harvey Elliott and the Dutch centre-back Sepp van den Berg. As prospects signed by the club in the 2019 summer transfer window, their sheer youth means that on the face of it, their inclusion amongst senior players on List A was unexpected.
However, if Elliot and VDB were going to be registered in Liverpool’s UCL squad at all, then the club had no choice but to include them on List A and, in doing so, designate them as Free players. This is because (i) Elliott and VDB do not yet fulfil the criteria required to be Locally Trained players, and (ii) they are not yet eligible for inclusion on Liverpool’s List B.
Elliott and van den Berg are currently victims of a quirk of UEFA’s regulations. Despite their young ages — being just 16 and 18 years old respectively — they cannot take Locally Trained player status on List A until they have spent three seasons at Liverpool. Assuming they hit that milestone in three years’ time, Elliott and VDB would become Locally Trained players (taking Club Trained player status in the process).
The other reason why Elliott and van den Berg are on List A at all is because Liverpool cannot put either player on List B until the start of the 2021–22 season.
What’s List B?
List B is a supplement to List A and is essentially reserved for academy players. In contrast to the capped numbers in List A, UEFA allows clubs to register an unlimited number of players on List B. That being said, in order to feature on List B in the 2019–20 season, a youngster must still meet two criteria:
Firstly, they must have been born on or after 1 January 1998. We can anticipate that for the 2020–21 season that date will go up to 1 January 1999.
Secondly, the player must have been at their current club for an uninterrupted period of two years at some point since their 15th birthday[6] (16-year-olds can be registered if they have been signed to their club for the previous two years). It’s on this second requirement that, as brand new signings, Harvey Elliott and Sepp van den Berg both fall down.
Liverpool’s other young Dutch defender, Ki-Jana Hoever, is also ineligible for List B on the basis that he is still only in his second season at the club. One might speculate that he, rather than van den Berg, would have been a Free player on Liverpool’s List A had it not been clear that Hoever was always going to be included in the Netherlands’ squad for the 2019 Under-17 World Cup. This international commitment meant Hoever was unavailable for at least two of Liverpool’s six UCL group stage matches. Hoever will become eligible for inclusion on Liverpool’s List B in the 2020–21 season.
Liverpool registered eight players on their List B[7] in the first half of the 2019–20 season. Their selections include many boys that have emerged from the club’s academy this season, such as Curtis Jones and Caoimhín Kelleher. However, Liverpool’s List B also includes a certain Trent Alexander-Arnold (how many of you missed him earlier?!).
Since Alexander-Arnold was born after 1 January 1998, and has spent his whole career at Liverpool, he is eligible to be included on List B in the 2019–20 season. Next season he, along with Kelleher, will be too old for List B and will ‘graduate’ to List A, where they can each take Locally Trained player spots as Club Trained players.
Over at Manchester City, Phil Foden is also a List B player. Assuming the criteria remains the same in future years, he will remain eligible for List B until the end of the 2021–22 season. Players like Foden and Trent Alexander-Arnold are especially valuable to their teams because their eligibility for List B, while still being genuine first team players, means that they essentially free up a space on List A for another senior first team member.
Liverpool’s Activity in the Summer 2020 Transfer Window
There are multiple factors that will influence how Liverpool shapes its squad in time for the 2020–21 season, from finances to player unhappiness. However, assuming they qualify for next season’s UCL (and qualification could be secured by the end of February!) then UEFA’s regulations on squad size will also be in their thoughts.
If I am to play Football Manager for a moment, below is a potential Liverpool List A for the 2020–21 season. Be warned, it only factors in players either returning from loan or leaving the club for free. I haven’t proposed any incoming transfers, so the #mbappe2020 and #sancho2020 crowds will be left disappointed. The purpose of this list is to identify possible categories of players that Liverpool might choose to target.
I have made the following (hopefully educated!) guesses about the futures of some players:
1. Adam Lallana will leave Liverpool after six years. He has just entered the final months of his current contract, and no new deal appears to be forthcoming. Although Lallana has been fit for most of this season, his combination of age and poor luck with injuries in prior years may count against his prospects of a renewal.
2. Similarly, forgotten man Nathaniel Clyne will depart once his own contract expires. He suffered a serious knee injury in pre-season and was left off of Liverpool’s UCL List A in the first half of the season. Having also spent the second half of the 2018–19 season on loan at AFC Bournemouth, it seems likely that Clyne has already played his last competitive match for Liverpool.
3. Andy Lonergan leaves Liverpool once his one-year deal ends. Having been in exactly the right place at the right time when injury afflicted his goalkeeping colleagues, his fairytale season could still get its perfect ending should Liverpool win the Premier League.
4. Harry Wilson returns to Liverpool after his own season on loan at Bournemouth and takes up a place in Liverpool’s senior squad — at least during the first half of the 2020–21 season. He will be 23 by then, so having spent his entire youth career at Liverpool, in the UCL he would be classified as a Club Trained player on List A.
5. For the reasons I have already detailed above, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Caomhín Kelleher both become Club Trained players on List A.
6. Marko Grujic does not return to the club and is instead either loaned out again or sold permanently. In contrast to fellow loanee Harry Wilson, Grujic did not join Liverpool early enough in his career to one day qualify as a Locally Trained player. As such if he was included on List A he could only be named as a Free player.
Taking these possible departures, returnees and List B graduates into account, Liverpool would have space to add one Association Trained player to its List A squad in the summer 2020 transfer window. If that is the case, instead of getting thirsty over the latest European winger on YouTube it might be wiser to focus on those transfer rumours that link Liverpool to English (i.e. Association Trained) players as they would be more likely to be true. Maybe #sancho2020 will be on after all… he can cover left back, right?!
Meanwhile, although Harvey Elliott and Sepp van den Berg would be spending a second year as Free players on List A in order to be included in Liverpool’s UCL squad, they could arguably be replaced by two more senior players. While this would mean a larger squad, we already know that Liverpool will be deprived of the services of Sadio Mané, Mo Salah and Naby Keïta while they are away at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations. This summer’s transfer window offers a chance to plan ahead.
Other Clubs’ Activity
Manchester City FC
As a club fuelled by practically unlimited resources, Manchester City have been surprisingly hamstrung by the choices that the List A rules have forced them to make.
In comparison to Liverpool, City essentially have two more senior players in their UCL squad (even if Laporte and Sané have been injured almost all season). Although both clubs named 22 players on List A, you can see below that there are no outrageously young players like Harvey Elliott in City’s squad.
City signed four players in the 2019 summer transfer window: defensive midfielder Rodri from Atletico Madrid, full back João Cancelo from Juventus (swapped with Danilo), a replacement third choice goalkeeper in Scott Carson, and the aforementioned Angeliño.
When I say that City have been surprisingly hamstrung, it is because the cap on Free and Association Trained players stops them from using their muscle to go out and buy the spare centre back that they have needed this season. They could probably afford anybody they like, but any new signing would currently have to take the place of someone else on List A. Although City had spaces for Free players this past summer, Guardiola preferred to fill those spaces by acquiring his perfect midfield shield and extra cover at full back.
Instead, City will have been operating a one-out-one-in policy in this winter transfer window. This situation will ease in the summer of 2020, since we know that David Silva is leaving the club and will likely be followed by Fernandinho and perhaps Leroy Sané. On that basis, City would have room to sign three Free players — so watch the money flow this summer. Until then, you can safely ignore any rumours linking City to literally anybody this winter.
I should also remark on how Scott Carson came to be at City. He must have thought that he would never get back to the upper reaches of the Premier League this late in his career, but Carson’s sheer Englishness was perfect for City this past summer.
After selling Fabian Delph to Everton, City were left with only three senior players that met the criteria to be Association Trained. And so, having also loaned out their own academy goalkeeper Arijanet Murić to Nottingham Forest, City went for Carson on loan to provide extra goalkeeping cover for Ederson and Claudio Bravo. One must presume they only did so because he came through the academy system at Leeds United and therefore qualified as Association Trained. This would have given him a crucial advantage over a ‘keeper from overseas, since a signing from outside England would have almost certainly been designated as a Free player for which they did not have the space.
Finally, I have already covered Angeliño’s story elsewhere, but it is remarkable that a club like Manchester City, which has invested so much in its age group teams and youth facilities, has still not produced more Club Trained players for its squad. When Arijanet Murić returns from his loan, he would join Angeliño as a Club Trained player. This rather underlines the point I made earlier in this piece, which is that at the best clubs, it can be easier said than done to get a full complement of 25 players on a UCL List A.
Juventus FC
The perennial Italian champions have attracted lots of praise for their transfer strategy, which has three main strands: (i) using the Bosman ruling to sign players on free transfers from European rivals, chiefly Adrien Rabiot, Emre Can and Aaron Ramsey; (ii) buying and then profitably selling on a rash of others, such as Mario Lemina, João Cancelo and Álvaro Morata; and (iii) spending huge money on a couple of coveted superstars — namely Cristiano Ronaldo and Matthijs de Ligt.
In particular, Juventus has used the Bosman ruling to its advantage. In an era of gigantic transfer fees, getting players in for free has led to plenty of envious glances being cast in the direction of the Old Lady. However, a deeper look at the team’s List A for the first half of the 2019–20 season — and the names not included on it — indicates that they had a bloated squad that badly required a trim.
If we review Juventus’s transfer movements through this prism, then their activity last summer (where Paulo Dybala in particular was apparently very close to leaving for Tottenham Hotspur) begins to make sense. They simply had to — and still need to — move senior players on, as they have too many of them to fit on a 25-man List A.
Above then is Juventus’s initial list A for the 2019–20 season. They have registered six players on List A that would be eligible for Association Trained status, which indicates that they have at least been adept at exploiting their status as the most powerful club in Italy to cherry-pick talent from other Serie A sides. As we know, only four players can be formally designated as Association Trained on List A, so in the table above I have arbitrarily selected Federico Bernadeschi and Leonardo Bonucci as Free players on the basis that their surnames come first.
However, we can also see that Juventus are less adept at cultivating academy players for their first-team squad. Having sold Moise Kean to Everton last summer, the only Club Trained player on List A is their own third-choice goalkeeper, 29-year-old Carlo Pinsoglio.
To illustrate the bloated state of the Juventus squad, I shall turn to the case of Emre Can. While signing the German international on a free transfer looked like a smart move for Juventus, their new manager Maurizio Sarri clearly doesn’t rate him, and so left him off his List A selection (Emre would be classified as a Free player). This left the player “shocked and furious”[8], as well it might have done you, had you been given assurances about your place in the squad while also being told not to leave the club for playing time elsewhere.
This winter Juventus have at least moved on other senior players who were not on their List A. Firstly, Croatian striker Mario Mandžukić — who scored Juve’s equaliser in the UCL final just three seasons ago — has joined Al-Duhail of Qatar having not been included a single Juventus matchday squad since September 2019. Secondly, the goalkeeper Mattia Perin has taken a loan move back to his first club Genoa rather than spend more time on the sidelines and off List A (admittedly much of this time was spent recovering from a dislocated shoulder).
Finally, in a bizarre reversal of fortunes, Giorgio Chiellini is a likely beneficiary of Merih Demiral’s knee injury suffered against AS Roma on 12 January. Chiellini spent the first half of this 2019–20 season recovering from his own ACL problem[9], and so was left off Juventus’s initial List A squad. With his return pending, he could replace Demiral (now out for several months) on List A for the second half of the 2019–20 UCL season.
Nevertheless, it seems that Juventus also still have some work to do on their compulsion to sign players. This winter they have signed Dejan Kulusevski from Italian counterparts Atalanta, and immediately loaned him to Parma. I had already done my research on the Juventus squad before the rumour about Kulusevski broke, so when I initially saw the link I dismissed it on the basis that their squad is still oversized. However, they signed him anyway, and here we are. As such, if Juventus were to integrate him into their UCL squad in the 2020–21 season (he’d be eligible to be categorised as Association Trained, although we have seen above that Juventus already have enough of these guys), they will need to disappoint another player.
Why Do We Even Have These Rules?
It’s worth briefly recalling that UEFA has a history of homegrown player restrictions on teams competing in Europe. At this point in this piece it’s perhaps enough to say that the current rules have been introduced and evolved as a response to the Bosman[10] ruling which, in addition to allowing players to leave clubs once their contracts expired, found that UEFA’s old ‘three plus two’[11] rule was incompatible with the European Union’s principle of the free movement of workers.
For a period, the interpretation of the Bosman ruling allowed clubs to sign and play as many EU players as they liked. However, in 2006 UEFA introduced a new homegrown player rule that was ultimately compatible with EU legislation, starting with a minimum of four homegrown players in a 25-player squad in 2006–07, rising to six homegrown players in 2007/08 and the current eight in 2008/09.
There are a couple of key reasons why UEFA enforces limits on squads at all, with a carrot and stick approach in play.
The upper limit on the number of players in List A is the stick. Making clubs stick to a maximum pool of 25 players is designed to stop the richest teams from stockpiling the best senior players and provides a level basic playing field (ha!) for every club in the UCL. Entrant clubs are still welcome to sign as many players as they like, but there is little point in hoarding players that they can’t register on List A. We’ve seen that in the case of Emre Can, and the manner in which City had to decide to prioritise one position over another in the summer of 2019.
The reservation of eight spots for Locally Trained players on List A serves — at least notionally — as the carrot for clubs, since it encourages them to look within their own countries for talent. Without quality players coming through the ranks at clubs all across Europe, participants in the UCL literally cannot fill all of the available spots in their squads. It’s a sort of mutually assured survival. Liverpool’s promising crop of Club Trained players for next season shows how such a policy can work out. Although I have not spelled it out in this piece, Real Madrid and Barcelona have each filled all 25 places in their List A, which means they must be doing something right on the youth side of things.
UEFA does also offer an indirect incentive to clubs to embrace the development of youth prospects who might, one day, feature in the UCL as a Club Trained player. That incentive can be found in UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (“FFP”) rules[12], the regulations that are best known for stopping Europe’s football clubs from making frequent and unsustainable financial losses in the pursuit of on-pitch success.
For the purposes of FFP, money invested by clubs in new or improved training grounds and stadia does not need to be counted towards its debts. This can help clubs appear more profitable (or less indebted), which assists with their FFP compliance. In essence, investments on buildings and pitches is regarded as ‘good’ spending by UEFA. And as the theory goes, the better the facilities, the more chance a club has of breeding and bringing through even more talented young footballers.
It’s worth remembering that the exploitation of this incentive is of course contingent on a club having access to financial capital in the first place. And, even with the incentive to spend money on an asset that doesn’t count towards the club’s FFP debts, many clubs will still take the easy option when it comes to deciding whether to buying a ready-made first teamer on the one hand, or a hydrotherapy pool and gym for its under 18s on the other.
That being said, where Liverpool are spending £50 million on enlarging their training base at Kirkby, to bring together the men’s first team and various academy teams on one site, where its FFP relationship with UEFA is concerned this investment has a dual benefit for the club.
Firstly, the money spent won’t show as a loss on the accounts that the club files with UEFA[13], so for FFP purposes it won’t compromise Liverpool’s short-term profitability. Secondly, in the longer term, and with the club finally operating from one training site, Liverpool ought to be even better placed to develop the next Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher. In other words: Club Trained players who become club legends.
The Future
Living in such uncertain times as we do, nobody can confidently predict how UEFA’s rules might evolve, although we can assume that some form of cap on squad size will remain the norm for the foreseeable future. However, I can at least identify a couple of the sources of uncertainty and expound on those topics.
At a regulatory level, we know that the current UEFA rules will only be in force until the end of the 2020–21 season, which would be the end of the latest three-year European cycle. Another set of regulations will surely replace them, and one can presume that since clubs are used to the caps and requirements for List A, UEFA will keep a near-identical system in place during the three-year cycle starting in 2021–22.
That being said, the media continues to report on a possible expansion in the number of matches in the Champions League. The most recent reports suggest that from 2024 onwards[14], some clubs could play up to four extra UCL games each season. Extra matches means even greater demands on elite players, and one way around this could be to allow for a minor relaxation on the four-player limit on Association Trained players so that clubs could get closer to the overall 25-player cap. This would arguably help keep a relative degree of harmony with those leagues, such as the Premier League, that have their own squad caps and local player rules.
From a political perspective, and with particular reference to the UK, the decisive result in the 2019 General Election may bring about faster and deeper changes to migration rules that — on the basis that the Conservatives could implement more restrictive immigration policies — indirectly force English Premier League clubs to steadily include more UK-trained players in their domestic squads. This might then put those clubs out of step with whatever rules UEFA has in force. While more restrictive migration laws would undoubtedly please some people, in the long run the restrictions would likely harm the standard of the domestic league and have a knock-on effect on English clubs’ competitiveness in European competition.
While the UK has been a member of the European Union, it has operated an immigration policy that favours EU citizens over those from outside the Union. English clubs have benefitted from easy access to a local trading bloc of over 500 million people, while still being able to cherry-pick the best players from further afield. However, since we do not have any certainty over how the UK will treat anybody from overseas in future years — whether from the EU or otherwise — we cannot confidently predict how this will affect Premier League clubs looking to sign a player from outside the British Isles. Given that the Premier League is one of the UK’s great cultural exports, watched and admired the world over, the Government may well see the sense in allowing the UK’s football clubs to continue to seek the very best talent from wherever they may be born.
The author is an English-qualified lawyer and Liverpool supporter.
© 2020 Craig Curran. All rights reserved.
[1] Liverpool FC agree deal to sign Takumi Minamino, 19 December 2019: https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/379040-liverpool-fc-agree-deal-to-sign-takumi-minamino
[2] The ‘cup-tie’ rule persists in domestic cup competitions. For instance, Danny Drinkwater was unable to make his debut for Aston Villa against Leicester City in the semi-final of the 2019–20 Carabao Cup because he had already played for Burnley against Sunderland in the second round.
[3] Regulations of the UEFA Champions League 2018–21 Cycle: 2019/20 Season https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Regulations/uefaorg/Regulations/02/60/37/12/2603712_DOWNLOAD.pdf
[4] See Articles 44.04 and 44.05 of UEFA’s Regulations. UEFA’s Locally Trained players requirement encourages the development of young players in each domestic association. However, since young European players usually train at clubs in their home Member State, reserving several spaces in a UCL playing squad for these local players risks indirectly discriminating against foreign players on the grounds of nationality (since foreign players can only take up 17 of 25 spots while local players could fill all 25). This indirect discrimination could make UEFA incompatible with one of the EU’s fundamental principles: that of the free movement of workers (see Article 45 TFEU). However, by not including specific nationality requirements in the Locally Trained players rule, UEFA and the EU just about co-exist over this particular UEFA rule.
[5] Andy Lonergan set to join Liverpool on short-term contract, 12 August 2019: https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/360357-andy-lonergan-liverpool-signing-contract-jurgen-klopp
[6] It’s worth noting that, as with List A, there are no barriers to inclusion on List B on the grounds of nationality.
[7] https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/season=2020/clubs/club=7889/squad/
[8] ‘I’m furious’ — Emre Can on being left out of Juventus’s Champions League squad, The Guardian, 4 September 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/sep/04/im-furious-emre-can-on-being-left-out-of-juventus-champions-league-squad
[9] In an ironic twist, Gianni Verschueren for Bleacher Report reports that Chiellini and Demieral have the same knee surgeon: Juventus’ Merih Demiral out 6–7 Months After Successful Surgery on Knee Injury, 14 January 2020: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2871380-juventus-merih-demiral-out-6-7-months-after-successful-surgery-on-knee-injury
[10] Case C-415/93 Union royale belge des sociétés de football association ASBL v Jean-Marc Bosman, Royal club liégeois SA v Jean-Marc Bosman and others and Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA) v Jean-Marc Bosman [1995] ECR I-4921)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:61993CJ0415&from=EN
[11] The ‘three plus two’ rule limited clubs to selecting just three foreign players and two ‘assimilated’ foreign players who had played in the domestic association of that club for five years (including three as a junior). For English observers the rule was most memorably invoked when Barcelona (featuring Pep Guardiola) crushed Manchester United 4–0 (minus Peter Schmeichel) in the group stage of the 1994–95 UCL season.
[12] UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, Edition 2018https://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Tech/uefaorg/General/02/56/20/15/2562015_DOWNLOAD.pdf
[13] Note that FFP’s artificial accounting regulations are not the same as the accounting rules that Liverpool must also comply with when filing accounts at the UK’s Companies House. The club’s significant investments on training and stadium infrastructure — plus the revenue it will bring in from selling its old training ground, Melwood — will still appear on their accounts at Companies House.
[14] Report: Uefa Champions League teams could play four more matches from 2024, SportsPro, 16 January 2020: http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/champions-league-expansion-uefa-eca-four-matches-2024
