Spain is another country that limits the number of foreign players on each soccer team though these days the cap only extends to non-EU players. This is especially stupid since Spain is a logical place for talented spanish speaking Latin American players to end up.

However, Spain allows these non-EU players to obtain a Spanish passport after "residing" in the country for 5 years giving them dual citizenship. This is pretty useless though since by then the good players are firmly entrench in their own national teams.

Regardless, it's escaped no one's attention that the Spanish national team consistently underperform in international competition. I think that this is a direct result of this policy.

The import of foreign players doesn´t actually harm the competitiveness of the professional players, but inhibits the development of native talent. It is much cheaper to buy a star than to develop several hundred young players.

Just a remainder, one of the italian players that won last world cup is actually from Argentina.

Quotas on foeign players has always been a part of soccer leagues. It was a very important restriction on European soccer (where limits were 3 foreign players per team) until the mid-90s, when a European Court of Justice ruling struck down intra-EU quotas. There still are quotas on non-EU players in many (most?) leagues.

There is nothing unusual about the Russian league's quota system at all.

A bit of the history of quotas on foreign players can be found in this intersting World Bank study that relates to Dan's questions:

The absence of free labor mobility in soccer was always an issue of the demand side. That is, there was never any Brazil-based impediment for a Brazilian player to go play in Italy. 9The problem was that the number of foreign players in the largest soccer countries, that is the richest countries in our model where the financial demand for a given skill level is the greatest (Spain, Italy, Germany, England), was subject to a quota. Normally only up to two or three foreign players were allowed to play in a club. Thus, for example, the most powerful European clubs (AC Milan, Inter or Real Madrid) could use only two non-Italian or non-Spanish players in their games. The rules were particularly restrictive for national championship where they remained in effect until the mid-1980’s. For the European club championship (Cup of Champions) the rules began to be relaxed a bit earlier: for example, clubs were allowed to field three instead of two “foreigners.” The quotas thus played a role of limiting the demand for players and impeding (or preventing) free circulation of labor.

The biggest turning point in this area came with the Bosman rule. Bosman was a Belgian player who played for FC Liege and who in 1995 sued his club and the Belgian soccer association, and later the European Soccer Association (UEFA) for preventing his transfer to a French club. He argued that the transfer rules and nationality clauses were not compatible with the Treaty of Rome and free movement of workers. The European court ruled against the right of the club (in this case, FC Liege) of asking for a transfer fee after the contract with the player had expired. 10 The court also ruled against the then existing practice of limiting the number of foreign players and treating players from other European Union countries as foreigners. As mentioned, Italian clubs treated its French or Dutch players differently from its Italian players—a thing which was not allowed in any other economic activity. The European court thus ruled that the difference of treatment of the nationals from other European Union countries was anti-constitutional. This opened the floodgates for a fully free movement of players within the European Union, and buried the two-foreign players rule. The limits on non-European nationals still remained, but were gradually raised to six or more in Italy, and were entirely lifted in England and Spain. Today, for example, London’s Chelsea at times fields as many as nine foreign players (out of 11), a thing absolutely out of the realm of the possible only a decade or so ago.

The comments so far are correct. Putin's concern is an old one and it always comes up when the national team does poorly. It was raised in England again this summer. And, few major teams have done as badly as Russia in recent years.

An interesting question. It's not entirely obvious to me that an infant industry argument for sports teams is absurd on its face.

If your ultimate goal is to do well in international tournaments, one has to account for the fact that international tournaments require that the national teams be composed of nationals of the country in question. In other words, you must domestically produce good players -- it's not useful to "consume" internationally-produced stars domestically. On the other hand, if your goal is to have a high-quality domestic club league for local consumption, then the usual arguements about protectionism would apply.

Though, I think that the last point is a good one. I don't know what the rules are about international soccer tournaments, but a national soccer team has about 20 members, right? So, you don't need to produce a lot of good players to make a good national team. It seems like as long as relatively minimal number of local guys get to play in the domestic league, it makes sense to expose them to the best competition possible.

Of course there is some nationalism involved, but there is a legitimate underlying concern about the development of new local talent. UEFA (which governs European soccer) is instituting rules requiring a certain number of players be produced from a team's own academy (meaning they most likely would be young local players).

It's also worth noting that the countries that have the best reputations for developing young talent are often the ones that can't afford big name foreign players- like Argentina, Brazil, the Netherlands.

Sorry to keep clogging the thread, but Bill H has nicely layed out the considerations faced by leagues and national teams. The trick is finding the balance between importing foreign talent that raises the quality of the league and also developing young domestic players so that the national team will be successful.

Yes, a World Cup team has only 23 players, but it requires a much larger player pool for a national team to be successful. It takes 2 years just to qualify for the World Cup and you lose players to injuries, poor form, etc. You also need competition for roster spots to motivate the players, plus you never know which players will turn out to be the real deal by the time the next tournament comes around.

Sometimes I think the focus shouldn't be on how many foreign players are in a league, but instead on how good the foreigners are. Bringing in a foreigner who is better than any domestic player may deny a local youngster a shot, but it also improves all the players on the team and teaches the young ones by example. However, a mediocre foreigner simply takes up a slot that could have been filled by a domestic player in the first place. As with many things, the concern should be quality, not quantity.

The only team in the 2006 world cup to have all of its starting 11 playing in its home league was, wait for it, Italy. The Italian success was noticed elsewhere.

Didn't Saudi Arabia also have an all-home league squad?

"The only team in the 2006 world cup to have all of its starting 11 playing in its home league was, wait for it, Italy. The Italian success was noticed elsewhere."

That's not exactly the point though paul. The Serie A is one of the best leagues in the world which attracts players from all over and does not restrict the number of non-EU players like Spain does. Italian players stay at home because they can still command big salaries while remaining in their own culture. Most the English players remain in England as well and they played terrible. Ditto for the Spanish.