Sheep Head

Morning everyone, just wondering if anyone can clear this up for me.

I joined Ascoli in March 2008 after being sacked by Sheffield Wednesday (that's another issue) I've been looking at players to recruit in the summer and have come across a number of Brazilians and Argentinians playing in Spain, Portugal and France.

However when I get to the screen to place my bid, at the bottom where your assistant manager throws his 2 pence in about the player in question, it also says that I can have a maximum of 0 non-EU players signed from abroad and that I currently have 0 in my squad. I have a number of feeder clubs so the work permit issue can be resolved in time, but i was just curious as to whether this is correct IRL, and if so why isn't it the same in Serie A. It seems a little harsh not to let Serie B teams do this if Serie A sides can.

Thanks

Gaz

jack.browne

There is not much you can do as it seems that these are the rules of the League or maybe the club.

Sheep Head

Ah, didn't think about the club....

saved_by_barry_horne

yeah thats correct. Serie A teams can only sign 1 non-EU player from abroad per season.

jack.browne

Chances are, the club is not the problem, but you never know.

Sheep Head

You learn something new every day. Thanks for your help everyone.

Ter

It's a really annoying rule. I'm currently managing San Marino and had a really good Mexican goalkeeper about to join and it couldn't go through as I had already signed a Brazilian defensive midfielder.

The rule doesn't work like it used to where if you were to sell a non-EU national to another country then it would free up a slot for you. Pretty sure there must be some sort of loophole to this rule, although the Italian teams probably use their many feeder clubs to get players to Italy.

For anyone playing in Serie A, is this rule present there too?

DarkArcAngel

DarkArcAngel

Well, IRL Serie A clubs flout this rule by getting numerous non-EU players in via their feeder clubs. But i believe this practise has not been implemented yet in the game. Correct me if im wrong. Cause in Serie A the rule applys to non-EU transfers between Italy and other countries, inclusive of EU nations, but not for transfers between 2 Serie A clubs.

Basically there r 2 ways around this problem. Either u buy non-EU players from other Italian clubs, or u avoid buying non-EU players altogether.

Correct me if im wrong for what i've just said.

Anyway what i did is to just to avoid buying non-EU players, especially african players. Although i must admit that non-EU players r generally much more cheaper than its EU counterparts.

deardo

Yes,it's a difficult rule on paper and does affect buying decisions for teams.

However, it's Italy, so there is always around the rule.

1) Especially for LATAM players, find a relative from whom the player can claim Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/French heritage.
2) Have a smaller club buy a player for you and park him there for a half a season. Once they are in Italy, they can pretty much move as if they are EU players:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Cabelino_Andrade

3) I think it is possible for clubs to bring in youth team members regardless of nationality. Otherwise, I don't see how teams like Udinese would be able to do what they do (buy 2nd/3rd world young, cheap players and sell them on when they get good).

Unfortunately, none of these things are modelled well in FM, so that makes things difficult. It's made worse because there is a "bug" that means that teams from the same division can't be feeders/parents. This apparently will be fixed, so a big part of youth development (remember no reserve league in Italy, only u20) can be replicated.

However, there is no way to replicate the Maxwell deal where Inter basically loaned Empoli the money to buy Maxwell (to get him in Serie A as Empoli's 1 non-EU player) and moved him in the next window IIRC.

As well, the Italian clubs have been good at finding relatives (sometimes fictitious, see Veron, JS) who can provide a passport. I can't see how that could ever be modelled in FM.

Just choose your 1 non-EU, foreign-based player carefully and look at non-EU players within Italy.

Hope this helps.