Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger wants the work permit rule for foreign players to be done away with.
Wenger is currently in negotiations with Villarreal over Brazilian defender Gabriel Paulista, but needs Home Office approval for the Brazilian to be allowed to play in the United Kingdom having not yet been capped for Brazil.
He said: “Ideally it would open completely, and anyone could come in.”
Currently the rules stipulate that non E.U. passport holders must play for the country of their birth and that that team must be ranked by FIFA in the top 70, and that they have played at least 75% of their country’s matches in the last two years.
Despite this rule if Arsenal can convince the Home Office that Paulista is an exceptional talent they can obtain permission for him to play in the United Kingdom.
The Football Association wants to reduce the number of non-EU players within English football by up to 50%, while Wenger thinks scrapping the rules entirely would be better for English players.
“You could close completely the borders of the country and play only with English players. What will that do? That will kill the attractiveness of the Premier League worldwide.
“The second option is to say ‘look we have the best league in the world, so let’s produce the best players in the world’.
“One thing is for sure, if you put a young player with top level players, he has more chance to develop. If you put him with average players he has more chance to remain average.”
Wenger went on to say that they could have signed Angel Di Maria but for the work permit requirements, and instead the Argentinian joined Manchester United for a British record fee of £59.7 million.
Wenger added: “We had identified Di Maria when he was 17. We saw him in an international competition and we wanted him to come here.
“But he went to Portugal, and from Portugal he went to Spain. Why? Because he could not get a work permit for England, so that meant you could only get him to England once he was worth a huge amount of money.”
