People want to write about Brexit, from whichever angle they’re approaching the topic.
There’s been repeat, albeit half-hearted, attempts in the European football media to present Brexit as the end of the Premier League’s dominance, but they tend to be low on detail and high on ill-informed assumption.
Today one comes from Italy, and it has a Watford flavour.
MundoUdinese, who will obviously cover the Pozzo family regularly, reckon Gino Pozzo ‘trembles’ because of Brexit, and that’s a bigger worry than Watford being bottom of the Premier League.
Take it away MundoUdinese: ‘If the United Kingdom were to exit without an agreement with the EU… In this case, the “specificity” of football would be overwhelmed and every European or naturalised player would be considered a non-EU player. Which would force many clubs, including Watford, to sell off many players. Someone in England claims that Okaka’s move to Udinese was due precisely to the omen of a possible depreciation had he remained.’
We don’t really want to get into Brexit, but here goes: The UK government has made it clear that EU nationals will be able to continue working in the country regardless of what happens.
Even if that plan was shelved and there needed to be a minimum income, it would only be very far down the football pyramid that there’d be any issue.
With non-EU nationals the work permit criteria is partly set by the FA, who have wanted to set a limit on those who can qualify, this has been the case for some time. Had the FA had no involvement then it’s quite likely there’d be more non-EU players allowed.
Where there may be an issue is currency devaluation, which could make the Premier League and Championship less attractive to overseas players. That could also cause an issue when paying transfer fees, however, there’s not going to be a panic induced fire-sale.
