BBC Radio did a story yesterday that at first seemed totally, uh, foreign, but the more I listened the more familiar it sounded.

It was a story about football.  (Soccer, that is!) 

And about the proposed "six-plus-five" rule. 

Apparently, in the U.K., there's been a lot of hand-wringing lately over the fact that many of the best football teams on the blessed plot are stacked with foreign players--they bring 'em in from France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, wherever they can find the best talent.  Football's governing body, FIFA, has offered and endorsed a plan:  

As it applies to England, the FIFA proposal is that every 11-man professional football squad should have a minimum of six native Englishmen on the squad, and thus, no more than five players from other countries.  "Six-plus-five," in other words.

The radio story I heard featured two commentators:  Pro and con.  (A unique and interesting idea that we might want to adopt over here!)

Pro:  In order to identify with local and national fans, a team should consist of players who have local or regional roots and have individual and personal loyalty to the team they are playing for.  If rosters are left open to a "best-players-to-the-highest-bidders" system, regional and/or national pride will cease to mean much in a game that has always, from its origins, been about stepping out onto the field and making the home crowd proud.

Con: The problem is not about English teams bringing in foreign players...The problem is that for the past couple of decades, English youth have simply not been trained and developed as in other countries.  It just isn't like it used to be--the reason that foreign players are starting to dominate English football is that in England, youth football just no longer has the organization and drive that, for example, youth cricket and rugby still have....

Both experts agreed that English football is the best football in the world, and that the English football league is the richest.  One expert opined that English football is the best football in the world because the league is the richest and therefore can bring in the best players; the other opined that it's because the English football league is the richest that it brings in the best players. 

--Geez, I don't know.  I don't generally pay any attention to "football."  I just heard this story on the radio.  And it kind of confuses me.  But isn't the whole thing sort of eerily familiar?