Imports Redefine the European Game
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Foreign players have always been something of a problem in soccer. This is not the classic situation with cheap foreign labor – soccer players are highly paid workers. But they do take jobs away from the locals. Are they desirable imports who enrich the domestic soccer scene? Or are they dangerous intruders, blocking the emergence of native-born talent?
This tug-of-war of opinions has been going on for over a century. Blame the Scots if you like; they started this mess, supplying many of the most skilled players to English clubs when organized soccer was just beginning in the 1880s. Or blame the English for letting them in. But the Scots weren’t legally classified as foreigners and the English welcomed them anyway.
Or maybe the Italians are the culprits, maybe it’s all Mussolini’s fault. In the 1920s, the fascists decided that anyone with Italian parents was, in fact, Italian – regardless of where they were born. They called them oriundi, and suddenly they came pouring into Italian soccer, these sons of Italian immigrants in Argentina and Uruguay.
Many of them were world-class stars, the classic example being Luis Monti, a member of the Argentine team that lost the 1930 World Cup final to Uruguay. The following year he moved to the Turin club Juventus. In 1934 Monti again played in the World Cup final, this time for the winning side … Italy.
After WWII, Spanish clubs started to import players, again mostly from South America. Both Italy and Spain placed limitations on the number of foreigners a club could sign, but the restrictions were of questionable effectiveness because the oriundi were always exempted.
There followed three decades of relative tranquility on the foreign import front. But by the 1980s it was clear that in a swiftly changing world – one in which soccer was becoming a global multibillion-dollar industry, and one in which deregulation was triumphant – restrictions on player movement were becoming unenforceable.
Now, it wasn’t just Italy and Spain. Germany, Holland, France, Belgium – even insular England – were seeking out foreign talent. South America was still the main source, but Africa was beginning to loom large as a new source of players.
The increasingly feeble attempts to hold off the influx were dealt a fatal blow in 1995, when the European Court banned all attempts to limit the movement of players within the European community. Theoretically, that new freedom did not apply to players from outside Europe. But a psychological barrier had been removed. If, for instance, an Italian club could now field a team without a single Italian on it, then why should it limit its signings to Europeans? Why not bring in yet more South Americans, who tended to be better players anyway?
That is where we are today. European clubs, especially the rich ones, can sign whomever they want. Obviously, they sign stars – these are not journeymen players they are bringing in.
In December 1999, the feared nightmare became reality as the English club Chelsea took the field without a single English player on the team. It turned out that this wasn’t, as the doomsayers had warned, the end of English soccer. In fact, the caliber of play in the English Premier League has never been higher, thanks largely to the imports. Meanwhile, the performances of the English national team – now, supposedly, deprived of promising youngsters – have been no better or worse than before.
All of this makes it sounds as though England is now leading the way in the import of foreign stars. As far as spending money goes, that is no doubt true.
But the English – either from being genuinely different or simply as the result of natural cussedness – have never managed to conform to the rest of the soccer world. So it is with player imports: England, unlike the rest of Europe, evidently does not want Brazilian players.
One extraordinary statistic reveals all: according to the Brazilian Web site Universo On Line, there will be 65 Brazilians on the 32 teams taking part in this season’s Champions League. If we limit that total to players likely to start, the number is closer to 40. That means that there are more Brazilians starting in this European championship than there are Englishmen or Germans or Italians.
Four English clubs are involved – Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester United – which could mean 44 English players. Not even close: There are actually only about a dozen Englishmen who start.
The ubiquitous Brazilians are spread amongst teams from Italy, Germany, Holland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, Ukraine, and Turkey. Brazilians even turn up in Moscow, where CSKA fields the endearingly named Wagner Love. They’re everywhere … except in England.
Liverpool and Chelsea have no Brazilians. Manchester United has Kleberson, not a regular starter. Arsenal has Gilberto and Edu, one of whom may perform as a starter.
Not only that, but the few Brazilians who do play in England are a special breed. Other countries covet the traditional Brazilian skills: the magical goal scorers like Wagner Love, Ronaldo (Real Madrid), Giovanni (Olympiakos), Franca (Bayer Leverkusen); or creative midfielders like Ronaldinho (Barcelona), Diego (Porto), Ze Roberto (Bayern Munich), Kaka (Milan), Matuzalem (Shakhtar Donetsk).
But Arsenal’s duo of Edu and Gilberto are typical of English tastes. Nothing flamboyant here: Both are high work-rate midfielders, almost duplicates of the English model, but with better ball skills.
Among the short list of Brazilians who have played in England there has been only one – Juninho, who had two very successful seasons with Middlesbrough between 1995 and 1997 – who typified the skill and artistry of Brazilian soccer.
It seems to me that deep within the national soccer mentality lies that old English distrust of anything too clever, too showy. Soccer is still felt to be more about “honest hard work” than cleverness with the ball. Players, in the English soccer vocabulary, should know how to get “stuck in,” rather than indulge in fancy-schmancy trickery.
That attitude may be changing. The emergence of David Beckham as a world star owes much to his ability to take wondrously swerving free kicks, to “bend it like Beckham.” Of course, Beckham did not invent his “patented” free kicks – it is a very Brazilian art, one that Brazilian players have mastered for over 50 years.
Beckham did not discover it – but he may have done something much more difficult. He may have nudged forward English acceptance of Brazilian skills, a change that would assuredly enrich English soccer.