Scottish Football’s Brexit Problem: No Entry and No Exit


Juhani Ojala knew she had to wait. Travel restrictions were still in place in Scotland when the Finnish defender agreed in mid-July to join Motherwell, a club of modest means and reasonable ambitions in the country’s top league. After landing, Ojala knew he would have to isolate in a hotel for 10 days before joining his new teammates.

What he didn’t know was how long to wait after that. Even after completing his mandatory isolation, Ojala was not allowed to start pre-season training. Legally, he wasn’t even allowed to hit the ball for another two weeks. Quarantine was a thing. The bureaucracy turned out to be different.

A year ago—indeed, at any point in the last two decades—Ojala’s transition to the Scottish Premiership would have made as little fuss as it might have noticed. Motherwell CEO Alan Burrows said that when Motherwell agreed to pay a fee with his former club and sign a contract with the player, it would be a simple “hop on a plane and seek medical attention”. “It would be ready to play in 24 hours.”

That all changed in January – four and a half years later Brexit referendum – Britain officially and finally left the European Union. From then on, clubs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not have unrestricted access to players from the 26 member states they have had since the 1990s (a different set of rules applies for Ireland).

Instead, potential members from Europe and the rest of the world to the UK are now evaluated on a points-based system that takes into account everything from their international careers and club teams’ success to how far they’ve gone. payable. Access to the English leagues is only given to players who can score 15 points or more.

For the cash-strapped teams of the Premier League, this change meant little. There may be occasional administrative delays – Manchester United had to wait several days for Raphaël Varane to receive his work visa even after he was approved – but the vast majority of potential recruits easily exceed the new, higher bar.

However, the effect has been entirely different in Scotland. Unlike the Premier League, the Scottish Premiership is not one of Europe’s financial powerhouses. Their clubs don’t always recruit medal-winning international players or collect stars from one of the continent’s most glamorous leagues.

Instead, their budget dictates that they should look for lesser-known names in smaller markets. Many say this approach has been made immeasurably complicated by Brexit rules. As the cost of acquiring players from England is also skyrocketing, clubs and their managers are increasingly concerned about what the future of Scottish football might look like.

“What we see is, really, that the markets chalk and cheese, but we have a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Motherwell’s Burrows. There is a premium on existing international players beyond the financial capacity of most Scottish clubs.”

England’s biggest teams do not face such an obstacle. The current system allows instant work for any player who has appeared in at least 70 percent of competitive matches in the past two seasons for any of football’s top 50 national teams. It also means that it is almost certain to pass any player who is a regular on a successful club team in one of Europe’s better leagues – or, to use the technical term, a Board Approval. Clubs in the Premier League tend to do most of their fishing in these rich waters.

But in Scotland only the country’s two dominant clubs, Rangers and Celtic, can dream of following players of this quality. The rest of Scotland tends to shop for bargains, or at least value, every time the transfer window opens. “It’s clear to me,” said Motherwell’s Burrows, “we will fight to get anyone we can afford to score 15 points.”

That was certainly the case with Ojala. To Burrows and crew, defender something like a blow: not only a Finnish international, but also a player who has occasionally captained his country; He is an experienced veteran not only in the Danish league, but also in Switzerland and Russia.

But when Motherwell said how many points it’s worth, it didn’t come close to the requirements.

“The Danish league is placed in the fifth group of six by the Home Office,” Burrows said. “He got a few points there. A few more on what his salary would be relative to the league average. But his team had finished fourth from the bottom in Denmark. He hadn’t played in Europe. He hadn’t played enough international games.” Ojala’s application eventually racked up just eight points.

This is where bureaucracy comes into play. Clubs in Scotland currently have access to an appeals system. They can apply to the Scottish Football Association for an exemption and, by making an appointment, press their case as to why an incompetent player would still sign a valuable contract.

But this is only the first step. If the authorities grant a Governing Body Approval on appeal, the player – sponsored by the club – must then apply for a work visa: filling out an online form, then making a biometric appointment at a visa application center from outside companies where the work is outsourced by the British government. Only after this is completed the player is granted a visa and the transfer is signed by the government.

According to Stuart Baird, a partner at Centrefield Law, a firm specializing in international sports law, while the “largely faceless” process has been smooth, first-time clubs navigating this space – increasingly the post-Brexit situation – haven’t always found it. it’s clear.

“One of the problems was that many clubs did not need to use the Ministry of Interior sponsorship system, as it was previously only required for non-EU players,” he said. “Sometimes it just depends on having the right people to help you get the answers clubs need in a timely manner.”

A concern for many clubs in Scotland is that the current system does not seem to take into account the type of players they can sign. Most of the markets Scotland’s teams have access to – in Scandinavia and the Balkans, for example – are ranked in subgroups of the Home Office’s criteria, and few of their teams compete in the later stages of European competitions.

A head of hiring on a Scottish Premiership team developed a thought exercise to figure out whether a theoretical goal could be earned by 15 points during the rare moments of idleness over the summer.

So far, even in his most fanciful scenario – he has signed an occasional international (no points) contract from the Czech league (Group 4, four points), regularly taking part (four points) in his club’s unexpected run to the next stages of Europe. League (Group 2, four points)—didn’t work the math.

For some, the lesson is simple: Clubs must learn to adapt to new rules, to find new members in places they don’t always look for.

“If we work like we did before, this will get us nowhere,” said Rangers coach Ross Wilson. “Clubs will have to develop strategies around the points system.”

For example, Rangers began to pay more attention to players in South America, realizing that while it is no longer easy to sign a player from a traditional market like Scandinavia, a normal Paraguayan or Venezuelan can go through the international application process. .

“The world is much smaller now,” Wilson said. “There’s more data, more advanced discovery systems, more intelligence. We’re able to reach a lot more markets than we could before.”

Wilson said he doesn’t believe cost should be a barrier to having a “solid infrastructure”, pointing out that although clubs can use third-party platforms like Wyscout and Scout7 to search for players anyway, Rangers have much greater resources. Celtic – Can devote most of their rivals in the Scottish Premiership to dwarf watching.

The future is bleak for these clubs. Burrows noticed that the Scottish teams were “squeezed in from both sides”. Not only is it difficult to identify players who meet the visa criteria from abroad, but clubs in England’s lower leagues are increasingly hesitant to import talent.

He said this has led to “significant inflation in domestic wages” and has priced Scottish teams from markets in the second, third and even fourth tier of English football. “Simple supply and demand,” Burrows said. “Gamers are a kind of commodity, and these players have become infinitely more valuable.”

Worse still, this may just be the beginning. That being the case, the exemption system that allowed Motherwell to sign Ojala this summer will be lifted at the end of the current transfer window. If the appeal mechanism is not maintained or the planned system is not changed, many of Scotland’s clubs may find it nearly impossible to import players.

“I hope that in the next four or five months, we can find a solution between windows that is not a 15-point system,” Burrows said. “If this bar remains, the market will shrink beyond recognition and this will make life very difficult not only for Scottish clubs but also for teams outside the Premier League in England.”



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