Blatter v Brussels Comes To The Beeb

Blatter is currently pressing for football to be exempt from EU labour laws that allow free movement of labour between member states and is calling for new limits on imported talent to protect the development of domestic youngsters. It is a shrewdly calculated position that will be well received in some quarters as it echoes concerns raised last month by Trevor Brooking that the proliferation of passports in the Premiership is damaging the long term prospects of home grown heroes and in the longer term the England team.

Pressing the right patriotic buttons may also play well with the wider football public too. One of the questions touched on in the Football Focus survey was the role of imports and 55% of respondents said they thought foreigners were having a detrimental effect on the English game and 56% backed calls for some kind of quota system, figures that could nudge up if Steve McClaren's side fail to qualify for the European Championships next Summer.

Blatter has been appealing to tabloid populism to outline a 'commonsense' position that players should be treated as extra-legal entities, special performers that should not be shackled by employment law . "Workers in Europe can circulate freely but footballers are not workers," he said. "You cannot consider a footballer like any normal worker because you need 11 to play a match - they are more artists than workers."

But there are far wider issues at stake for Blatter than protecting British benchwarmers at the big four. The big facade of Blatter defending domestic talent is a Trojan Horse being used by Blatter to try to set a precedent that gives football a special legal status as part of a far wider political power struggle between UEFA and the big clubs on one side and the European Union on the other that has been bubbling away for years, has come to the boil over the past 12 months and is fast heading towards a crunch decider.

At root is the EU's drive to end some historic exemptions and bring football within the broad legal framework of European law. The early round skirmishes between the big boys add up to a score draw so far: EU employment law triumphed over football causing contract chaos with the Bosman judgement that footballers had the right to freedom of contract and that clubs could not retain players against their will but football won an exemption from rules on competition and monoplies when they were granted permission to organise as a cartel to sell their broadcasting righst collectively.

But the EU has prepared a new big push to regulate the game that should tick a lot of boxes with fans but has the ruling elite of the game running scared. Last year an extensive independent review of the top level game across the continent, jointly commissioned by UEFA and the EU was delivered. The Arnaut Report - which you can read in all its full dry legalese glory here - was a searing 165 page analysis and proposed a string of reforms to curb the financial excesses, tackle legal abuses of individual rights and bring the game within political and legal framework that made it accountable and transparent.

Some of its recommendations, like a voluntary quota scheme and the collective sale of TV rights, UEFA and the big clubs were happy to accept but others sent the game into meltdown with threats of legal action, breakaways, media blackouts and a political backlash.

But some proposals struck at the heart of the G-14 boom economy: Arnaut argued a case for a salary cap and suggested a Robin Hood tax system that redistributed excessive profits from Champions League winners to the lesser clubs and the implication was that would be extended to domestic leagues too. Likewise the G-14 - who came in for a savaging for their undemocratic structure and aims - were not impressed by suggestions that UEFA should extend their authority over domestic leagues in a move that would harmonise and standardise the rule books but also give them authority over the biger clubs and in theory the power to launch their own interleague bodies... and a superleague.

The big clubs - which have a lot of political clout and the ear of presidents and prime ministers in some countries, and Rupert Murdoch in others - have been furiously lobbying and lining up their allies. Gordon Brown is said to have marked out his position not so much alongside the clubs as against Brussels.

But fans should see tha ttheir interests lie in supporting the EU's bid to curb the excesses of the big clubs that have distorted the structure of the game and allowed financial chaos to reign. Salary caps, redistribution and shackling of the G-14, all which would make domestic league more competitive and sustainable may be moot points but surely all supporters would back the plans to crackdown on agents, end the trafficking of schoolboys from Africa via feeder clubs in countries with more lax work permit criteria, regulate the betting industry, introduce a 'fit and proper person' ruling to stop robber barons and money launderers taking over clubs and important powers to intervene in domestic leagues when they fail to address abuses like the Italian match fixing scandal and the failure to deal with hooliganism there too.