For decades, we’ve been using nifty shorthand to define soccer’s playing formations. We’ve talked of 4–2–4, 4–3–3, and 4–4–2, and lately of 4–5–1. You’ll notice there are only 10 players in these formations. These are tactical setups, and the goalkeeper is largely irrelevant to tactics. But hold on. We have a newcomer in this numbers game: the 6 + 5.

Eleven players? This tells you that this is not a playing formation. The goalkeeper is included because this is a political lineup. The 6 + 5 is what the president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, is hoping to sell to the European Union in the near future. It means that six homegrown players would play with five foreign players. Blatter is hoping that, starting in 2010, all professional club teams will take the field with those quotas, certainly with no more than five foreign players.

Most of the top European clubs are awash with non-national talent. Of the approximately 400 players in the English Premier League (EPL), 208 are foreigners. They come from over 55 different countries. Last week, the London club Arsenal put out a team with players from a wide assortment of countries, including the Netherlands, Belarus, Togo, the Ivory Coast, Spain, France, and Switzerland — but not England.

That’s not right, Blatter says. The current practices are not giving homegrown youngsters a chance, hence his insistence that there must be a quota to encourage clubs to train their own players. It hardly needs saying that Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger (a Frenchman) does not agree. He dismissed Blatter’s idea by saying, “My first responsibility for my club is for us to play the best soccer with the best players. It does not matter where you are born, it matters who you are.”

Blatter and his supporters believe that the widespread use of foreign talent will undermine the strength of national teams — something that they fear would weaken the appeal of the World Cup, FIFA’s quadrennial cash cow.

Most of the rich European clubs, though, do not support Blatter. They want to be free to spend their money how they like, and to buy whichever player they want. But no doubt, the bulk of the not-so-rich pro clubs would welcome any restriction on the ability of the rich guys to outspend their competitors.

The arguments that will decide the issue will have little to do with the sport of soccer. The lawyers and the politicians are now the key figures. A new FIFA committee (the Strategic Committee) is currently meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, and one of its tasks will be to look into the 6 + 5 proposal, and pass on its findings to the FIFA executive committee. Then will come the big move — a political statement from FIFA asking the European Union for exemption from its freedom-of-movement labor laws.

At the moment, within the European Union — home of all the richest clubs — it is illegal to impose any restrictions on the employment of workers. Hence, any quota system such as the 6 + 5 is banned.

But sport is different, Blatter says. Soccer should not have to abide by the same rules as regular businesses: “Workers in Europe can circulate freely, but soccer players are not workers … they are more artists than workers.”

In today’s EPL, top players earn over $200,000 a week. It is the huge amounts of money now circulating in pro soccer that have hardened the European Union’s stance. International soccer is now a multi-billion dollar business, and must be treated as such. Frederic Vincent, a spokesman for the European Union’s sports commissioner, Jan Figel, said recently that the 6 + 5 scheme “contravenes the European Union treaty and internal market rules on the free movement of workers.” Vincent also dealt with Blatter’s claim that soccer players should not be classified as workers, adding, “a player is a worker who earns a salary, like everyone else.”

The clash between these opposing views will come later this month when the heads of the governments of the EU countries meet to discuss possible treaty reforms. But Blatter’s position is weakened by his failure to enlist the support of Europe’s top clubs. A spokesman for the EPL, Dan Johnson, stressed that Blatter’s position is “just not legal. Under EU law we couldn’t do it.” He pointed out that EPL clubs are already investing millions in their youth academies, with the aim of producing homegrown players.

UEFA, the controlling body of European soccer, has adopted this approach, encouraging clubs to nurture their own players. In doing so, it has been careful to avoid the word “foreigner.” Any player, wherever born, is thus considered homegrown if he comes through the academy system. While this ploy may evade EU regulations, it does nothing to solve a much more fundamental problem of the academies: that they do not do the job. Look at Arsenal again, with its all-foreign team: Not one of those players came through the Arsenal academy system.

Earlier this year, the coach of Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, commented on the failure of the academies to produce first team players. “At some point the chairman or owner of a club is going to say, ‘Well, where are all these players?’ It costs us 3 to 4 million pounds ($6 million to $8 million) a year to run our academy. … I think the academy system is seriously in danger of falling apart,” Ferguson said.

To Blatter’s critics within soccer, his quota system looks like a guarantee of first team places for academy graduates. That is unacceptable to Wenger, who says, “Sport is competitive, and competition is based on merit.”

But it is not sporting merit that will decide the issue. It will come down to Blatter’s ability to convince the EU bosses that the 6 + 5 formula makes sense, and that soccer — a glamorous, thriving, multibillion dollar global industry — warrants exemption from the laws that apply to all other business operations in the European Union.

pgardner@nysun.com