New FA rules 'will force clubs to nurture English talent'

The chairman of the Football Association has issued a stark warning that Premier League football is in danger of "having nothing to do with English people".

To address the issue, Greg Dyke is to limit the number of non-EU players in the top flight of the English game while at the same time seeking out the best in young home-grown talent.

Existing rules stipulate that Premier League clubs must field eight home-grown players in their 25-man squads, a figure that will rise to 12 following recommendations from the FA commission, which was set up in 2013 to improve the national team.

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"How many more Harry Kanes are there out there, who just can't get a game?" asked Dyke, aware that this season only 35 per cent of the Premier League playing pool is English. "We will go round (the clubs) and try to convince them. We will ask: 'Are you sure you haven't got a Harry Kane playing in your youth side?'

Kane is the 21-year-old Tottenham sensation, who last week was called into the England squad for the first time and celebrated with his first Premier League hat-trick in Spurs' 4-3 defeat of Leicester at the weekend.

"It must help negotiations, mustn't it?" added Dyke. "Suddenly an English kid who was out on loan at four different places, who was touch-and-go to get a game in the first team, is suddenly the top scorer in English football."

BBC Sport reports that the FA will also allow "only the best non-EU foreign players [to] be granted permission to play in England". In addition under the new rules a player must be registered with his club from the age of 15 – instead of the current age of 18 – in order to qualify as 'home-grown'.

Dyke insisted that the FA still wanted to attract the best footballing talent in the world to England, but said the game also contains "an awful lot of bog-standard players" from overseas. It's these players he wants to see supplanted by young English talent in the coming years, he said.

"It matters that this happens across the whole of English football, but it particularly matters to the top end of the Premier League," Dyke said. "If you look at who is playing in the Champions League, the English numbers compared to the Germans, the Spanish or the Brazilians, are pathetic."

Support for the stricter work-permit rules – which will come into force on 1 May after being approved by the Home Office last Friday – is former England defender turned pundit Danny Mills. He sits on the FA commission and believes that a tougher approach is needed if England are to become once more a force on the world stage.

"We want the best players but we are starting to get foreign players in the Championship and League Two," he explained. "That reduces the number of English players who can come through the system."