The barren wasteland of Arsenal news prompts me to write this little feature, which is just as important an issue in the world of football.

While European football remains the home of more skillful, intelligent and stable football, I’d like to bring your attention to a little story that has developed in the land of Australia.

It’s no secret that Australia prefers to produce players who like to use their elbows and shin-breaking tackles to get results rather than any flamboyant skill. But the country has produced some players of genuine quality, namely Tim Cahill and Mark Schwarzer, and the now spent-forces of Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka.

So while Australia is not exactly a production line of fantastic players, there is talent within her shores to warrant developing her players in Europe.

Step forward Michel Platini, along with his stupid ‘homegrown rule’, that will mean Australian kids won’t get their chance to be ‘exploited’ and trained overseas, unless their parents (who either have businesses, extended family, etc) move with them to Europe.

Ninety-five per cent of families could never afford to do it. Especially as jobs are hard enough to get in Australia, why would you leave for Europe where the financial crisis has been felt ten times more?

Furthermore, even after moving to England and getting snapped up by a football club’s youth academy, the lack of a transfer certificate means that player will never be able to partake in competitive matches. The words ‘waste of resources’ don’t do that kind of cock-up justice.

What did Arsene Wenger have to say about this when asked some time ago? In response to assertions from Sepp Blatter and Platini that transferring players who were below the age of 18 across the globe to play for your club as ’slavery’, Wenger said:

“If you have a child who is a good musician, what is your first reaction? It is to put them into a good music school, not in an average one. So why should that not happen in football?”

And thanks to his wise words, we now see the folly in two bureaucrats who are on the rampage to wreck football as we know it. Call me paranoid, but you just get this feeling that these rules would only be upheld sternly for English clubs. The price that someone like Lionel Messi would have to Barcalona means that Platini would never stand in their way of picking up a player of his standard. Yet when Wenger wants to use his contacts in the Ivory Coast to bring in players to Beveren or straight to Arsenal, or when Chelsea pick up Gael Katuka, the authorities kick up a stink.

Players like Messi, like Toure, like Essien, et al, would not be nearly the players they were, were they not ‘exploited’ in moving to Europe, training with the best, and becoming the best.

And if that means that a player such as Cesc Fabregas has to move from his home club to a team in London to become the best, knowing that the club his DNA is supposedly entwined with will never see him as more than a bench player, so be it.

Furthermore, what hope do nations outside of Europe have if this is the case? Are they not aware that everyone worldwide watches at least one of the leagues from the continent, with a much greater interest held in La Liga than the Premier Soccer League (South Africa), the Premier League than the J-League, or Serie A than the A-League? How else can enthusiasm for the sport in other countries and continents grow if they cannot see their stars going head to head with the world’s best in the top leagues?

Or is it some kind of old-fogey Euro-centric conspiracy to ensure the continent produces the next batch of World Cup winners, with only the strong local following of South American football and (bizarrely) Major League Soccer to contest that dominance?

I would say “1-0 to Wenger” at this point, but frankly, the Platini/Blatter bandwagon’s not even coming second in the sensibility stakes.

Filed under: Arsenal, Blogging