Foreign invaders

English football isn’t terribly English any more. No, this isn’t some xenophobic UKIP rant but a statistical fact. Apparently, only about one in three Premier League players were born in England, and two in five in the UK. The balance is probably not a great deal different in the lower leagues. Watching Everton v West Ham the other week, I noted that the away team’s starting XI featured eleven different nationalities! The familiar debate concerns the question: is this a Good Thing?

On the whole I’d say yes. While the talent pool from which England draw their international squad has inevitably shrunk, those that emerge from the system are probably better players for training and mixing with the 60% who hail from all corners of the globe.

Once upon a time, when this Essex boy first immersed himself in the sport, a foreign import probably originated in Glasgow, Cardiff or Belfast. Familiar faces from the Republic of Ireland, such as Johnny Giles, Don Givens or Eamonn Dunphy, were positively exotic. The first genuine foreigner I recall seeing on Match of the Day was West Ham’s Clyde Best. It seemed ironic that a club with such a racist (or ‘racialist’, as it was then) following could embrace a black player in their team alongside Moore, Hurst and Peters, but the Bermudan overcame initial hostility to become a firm favourite in an eight-year stint at the Boleyn Ground. A teenage Nigerian Ade Coker joined him in 1971 and these trailblazers helped attract not only English black youngsters but also those from overseas.

By the end of the Seventies, imported players were still rare, largely restricted to a handful of Argentine World Cup stars like Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa at Spurs and the classy Dutch midfield pair of Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen at Ipswich. In the Eighties, after Italy won the World Cup, Serie A was the centre of European football. There were more top Brits heading to the likes of Milan, Inter and Juventus than Italians heading in the opposite direction. The UEFA ban on English clubs after years of hooliganism culminated in the Heysel disaster of ’85 didn’t help. However, a two-way flow was beginning to take shape.

Liverpool’s all-powerful squad included the entertaining Zimbabwean ‘keeper Bruce Grobbelaar, Danish midfielder Jan Molby and Aussie Craig Johnston, and Nottingham Forest fielded the Dutch pair of goalie Hans van Breukelen and centre-back-cum-free-kick expert Jonny Metgod. Jesper Olsen was a welcome sight on the wing for Man United, too. However, perhaps the greatest foreign import arrived in early 1992: Eric Cantona. He’d pissed off just about every club in France so Leeds picked him up for £900,000, an absolute bargain as he was the catalyst for winning the last League championship before the Premier League era. Of course, King Eric became one of Man U’s most colourful and celebrated characters, stroking the ball, scoring goals and polishing his ego. Oh, and kung-fu kicking barracking fans at Selhurst Park which actually made him more, not less endearing to real footie fans. I’m sure I’m not the only adult either to have found it amusing to turn up a shirt collar in homage to the idiosyncratic and eccentric Frenchman. Surely not. Am I?!

The arrival of foreign managers accelerated the imports. Chelsea’s sequence of coaches from Gullit and Vialli to Ranieri and Mourinho, backed by the bottomless pockets of Ken Bates then Roman Abramovich, brought in a galaxy of stars such as Roberto di Matteo, French defenders Marcel Desailly, Frank Leboeuf and William Gallas, Romanian wing-back Dan Petrescu, Portuguese pair Ricardo Carvalho and Paolo Ferreira, and Ivorian striker Didier Drogba. With Arsenal signing the delightful Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan in 1995 and Arsene Wenger further introducing the PL to his fellow countrymen Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Patrick Vieira, London began to steal some Nineties limelight from Manchester and Liverpool.

Boxing Day 1999 was a significant date in the history of footballing migration. It was the first instance of an all-foreign starting eleven in England (Chelsea). This was surpassed on 14^th February 2005, when Arsenal fielded not only a starting XI but also a full subs bench of non-UK players. The future looked bleak for home-grown youngsters; how could they ever break through when the top clubs buy abroad and abandon the traditional route of developing talent via schools and youth systems?

Some of the traditional footballing enclaves up north also cast their nets wider. In particular, Bryan Robson somehow convinced the young Brazilian Juninho and silver-haired Fabrizio Ravanelli to join Middlesbrough in 1994 and for a season or two they and Emerson looked irresistible but it didn’t last. In the past twenty-five years, so many overseas players have sprinkled their stardust on the Premier League for huge fees and salaries, making a massive impact before moving swiftly on. Deco, Jurgen Klinsmann and Didier Deschamps spring to mind.

Others have lingered longer to become as legendary as many homegrown predecessors. Claus Lundekvam (Southampton), Sami Hyypia (Liverpool), Angel Rangel (Swansea), Tim Cahill (Everton), Branislav Ivanovic (Chelsea), Denis Irwin (Man Utd), Lucas Radebe (Leeds) and Vincent Kompany (Man City) have all left a lasting legacy with their clubs. In contrast, hired guns like Louis Saha, Nicolas Anelka and Robbie Keane ploughed a furrow crisscrossing the country over a number of years, accumulating a fortune in signing-on fees in the process.

As ever, it’s strikers like those two who tend to grab the headlines. For fourteen consecutive years, sandwiched between Kevin Phillips and Harry Kane, overseas players topped the Premier League scoring charts. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Robin van Persie flew the Dutch flag but Arsenal’s Thierry Henry was particularly prolific, taking the Golden Boot four times in five seasons. Much as I would detest the Gunners, few strikers can have made such a permanent impression as the va-va-voom Frenchman.

It used to be said that England had the best goalkeepers in the world but that’s definitely a boast long since consigned to the bench. They may have killed the art of catching the ball but, from the unbreachable Peter Schmeichel to David de Gea, Brad Friedel to Petr Cech, our own ‘keepers have had to play catch-up with middle-ranking clubs.

Top class defenders have become part and parcel of the English game, too. It’s not just the World Cup winners who formed a solid wall for the Arsenal and Chelsea champions, but also classy centre-backs like Man Utd’s Nemanja Midic, Newcastle’s Phillippe Albert, Olof Mellberg (Villa), Stephane Henchoz (Blackburn), Josef Yobo (Everton), Jan Vertonghen (Spurs) and Southampton’s Ken Monkou, all of which I liked watching.

We’ve imported some of the finest midfielders, too. It’s not all about the goal-scoring ‘number tens’ like Hazard, Payet and Coutinho, either. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the seasons in which Michael Ballack (Chelsea), Santi Cazorla (Arsenal), Luca Modric (Spurs) and even Ivan Campo (Bolton) graced the league. And when it comes to helping others put the ball in the net, few have surpassed the Spanish assist wizards Cesc Fabregas, Juan Mata and David Silva.

I can’t deny there have been some marvellous entertainers amongst the influx. For ball control, few could surpass the little Georgian genius Georgi Kinkladze, who wowed the Maine Road crowds in 1996/97 or Bolton’s Jay-Jay Okocha a few years later. Paolo di Canio delighted and exasperated in equal measure, in the colours of Sheffield Wednesday or West Ham. Adel Taarabt practically promoted QPR to the PL single-handed in 2010-11, for which we Hoops supporters are eternally grateful.  But for me one of the greatest signings from foreign shores was Gianfranco Zola. I always love sportsmen and women who play with a smile on their faces. Forget the rock star poses, the tattoos, the well-rehearsed goal celebrations; the humble Sardinian shone even amongst the Chelsea superstars in the late Nineties and early Noughties, scoring one of the cheekiest goals ever in 2002.

Some have been more memorable for their snigger-friendly names. Who can forget Messrs Shittu, Arca, Bong, Rat and Fish? And then there are the stereotypes: rangy African midfielders, steadfast Czech and American goalies, flying Irish full-backs, twinkle-toed Iberian playmakers, and East European strikers who never quite live up to their hype. For all their strengths and shortcomings, the insurgents have been key figures in the rich tapestry of English football for five decades.