FIFA top brass
This has absolutely nothing at all to do with Hartlepool United, who have a couple of foreign players in keeper Jan Budtz and striker Joel Porter, but it's such a hair-brained scheme that it deserves an airing somewhere on SportNetwork.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter, no stranger to daft ideas, wants the "six plus five" principle introduced all over the world, and FIFA's big wigs have voted to endorse the idea and to explore it.
At their meeting in Sydney, the vote was 155-5 in favour of Sepp's soppy idea.
Well, boys, we can save you the bother. Forget it.
Anybody who has had their car cleaned by a Slovakian, their plumbing done by a Pole and their fruit picked by a Latvian can tell you that in Europe, citizens can move freely from country to country and work where they like. If they earn their living playing football, they tend to go where the good money is.
The European Commission says it would be illegal to restrain such freedom and they have no plans to change the law just for Sepp and his mates.
BBC Sports Editor Mihir Bose, who writes as if he thinks he knows everything about all sport, says on the Beeb website: "The congress has merely backed Blatter to explore the idea - nothing more than that.
"The vote was about a wish list and does not represent any rule change.
"He (Blatter) is under no illusions that the Europeans are against it, and that this would fall foul of European law."
Righto, Mihir, so why is he wasting his time on this? And can you explain why they plan to spend money to explore an idea which is illegal when the money would be better spent buying footballs and other gear for kids in Africa and other poor areas of the world where the game is so popular?
And did nobody notice that Man Utd won the Champions League with six English players in the team?
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