Anyone who would vote on such an important matter as being in the EU based on its impact on your football team is in my view in need of some serious perspective. However one common misconception is that pulling out of the EU would result in less foreigners being allowed to enter the UK and one person mentioned restrictions on people of brown race. Nothing could be more ill informed pulling out of the EU simply gives us the ability to control our borders our nation can choose how few or how many to allow to become British citizens based on our need as a nation not on the will of the EU. In terms of the ignorant comments previously made by a poster about brown skin let me advise this person currently there are restrictions in the UK on persons coming from the Indian sub continent because immigration is forced from the EU whether it's good or bad and incidentally mainly from countries of Caucasian race. The UK Indian restaurant market for example is suffering one reason we can't recruit top chefs from India because under the current set up they are not allowed in but unskilled workers from other parts of the EU there is no restrictions at all. Bring this to the football world where there a need for footballers from anywhere in the world there would be no restrictions at all whereas under the EU technically there are restrictions if they are not from the EU area. This is the very opposite of what people perceive
Not quite so...
Who gets to stay?
If you’re not one of the 27 other nations in the EU, you need a work permit to ply your trade in Britain—and that includes soccer.
Under the FA’s work-permit rules, a player’s eligibility to play is determined by the international ranking of their national team. So a Brazilian, for example, would have to play for his national team in at least 30% of its matches over the last two years in order to automatically qualify. The worse a country, the harder it is for their top players to get in.
If Brexit does occur, European players could be subject to these same work-permit regulations.
Campaigners argue that Brexit could dramatically reduce the number of European players in the Premier League, as many would not automatically qualify to enter the UK if the FA’s work permits were applied to them.
An analysis by The Guardian suggests that two-thirds of players within the EEA (the EU, plus other nations like Iceland and Liechtenstein) wouldn’t meet the FA’s criteria to work in the Premier League. That excludes big names like Juan Mata and David De Gea of Manchester United, Chelsea’s Kurt Zouma, and Manchester City’s Samir Nasri. (In all likelihood, those stars will stay safe if Brexit happens as the rules aren’t likely to be applied retroactively.)
That said, one of global football’s biggest stars would never have launched his career in England without the benefit of EU rules. Cristiano Ronaldo, the Real Madrid superstar and three-time Ballon d’Or winner, left his native Portugal at the age of 18 to play at Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. That was 2003, and he hadn’t yet won his first cap for the Portugal senior team. Ronaldo could freely play in England because of the EU’s freedom of movement rules, but that wouldn’t have been possible if England hadn’t been part of the union.
“Cristiano Ronaldo would not have had a work permit, under the present rules, at the point he signed for Manchester United,” says Rory Miller of the University of Liverpool.
While those campaigning for Brexit emphasize the drawbacks of immigration, those wanting Britain to stay list the benefits of the EU’s freedom of movement (pdf). British chancellor George Osborne warned that the economy would shrink by 6% by 2030.
