The transnational nature of football comes with certain complexities which include, inter alia, immigration uncertainties 💆🏾♀️. I felt this would be an ideal time for this post.
Have you ever heard African fans asking, “why do a lot of our young talented players not go to good leagues, like England?”
Well, one of those reasons is…….. 🥁Yupppp!
👉🏾 the strict GBE regulations.
This is not the same as a UK visa.
What are the hashtag#GBERegulations?
In my own words, I would say they are a set of criteria formulated by The Football Association (“the FA”), the Premier League and the English Football League, and approved by the Home Office, which gives English clubs permission to employ international players.
The FA is the approved governing body for football in the UK. According to its website, “a player can register for a club without a GBE but, in order to play any football or undertake any employment duties for the club (including participation at training and in friendly matches), he must have obtained a GBE.…”.
The FA will grant a GBE if a player’s international appearances meet the auto pass percentage (see Part 2). However, if a player does not meet the auto pass criteria, then it’s “calculator time” because the player will need to achieve 15 or more points in accordance with other criteria which will become clear (hopefully!) in Part 2.
If a player is not granted a GBE in accordance with the standard criteria, there is still a lifeline, as the club may apply for the player to be granted a GBE as an Elite Significant Contribution (ESC) player (to be discussed in part 3).
There’s a lot to take in… 😅
In order to calculate GBE points, you need to know the bands below 😉
🎯Band 1 – means the English Premier League, the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1.
🎯Band 2 – means the Portuguese Primeira Liga, Eredivisie, Belgian First Division A, the Turkish Super Lig and the English Championship.
🎯Band 3 – means the USA’s Major League Soccer, Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, Primera División of Argentina, Liga MX and the Scottish Premiership.
🎯Band 4 – means the Russian Premier League, the Czech First League, Croatian First Football League, the Swiss Super League, La Liga 2, Bundesliga 2, Ukrainian Premier League, the Greek Superleague, the Colombian Categoría Primera A, the Austrian Football Bundesliga, the Danish Superliga and Ligue 2.
🎯Band 5 – means the Serbian SuperLiga, the Polish Ekstraklasa, the Slovenian PrvaLiga, the Chilean Primera División, the Uruguayan Primera División, the Swedish Allsvenken Division, the Norwegian Elitserien Division and the Italian Serie B, the Hungarian Namzeti Bajnoksag, the Japanese J1 League and the South Korean K League 1.
🎯Band 6 – means all leagues not in Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, Band 4 or Band 5.
Ref: The FA
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To enjoy the full benefit of this post and some interesting comments, you can also view it on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7281801345899102208/