Blatter's quota vote could force clubs to cull foreigners

The most radical shake-up of football in decades could be just months away after Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, said yesterday that he wants a vote on quotas for home-grown players to take place in May.

Under Blatter's proposal, club sides would be forced to field a minimum of six players eligible for the national team of the country in which they play. In England, this would mean teams such as Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool being fundamentally dismantled and reshaped to include at least six English players for all games.

In theory, this could happen as soon as August. In practice, major legal hurdles will probably prevent that. But Blatter's announcement is the strongest signal yet that Fifa, world football's governing body, intends to do everything in its power to introduce quotas in some form as soon as possible.

The springboard for the announcement was a meeting on Monday of the Fifa Football Committee, a group of prominent players, former players, coaches and officials, including a representative of the players' international union, FIFPro. Those present included Blatter, Franz Beckenbauer, Pele and Sven Goran Eriksson.

Eriksson, whose Manchester City side is dominated by foreign players, was presumably among those who voiced, according to a Fifa statement, "certain doubts as to [the] effectiveness" of the so-called "6+5" plan. But the same statement also announced that the Committee "considers the 6+5 rule in principle as necessary, and also advisable from a moral point of view."

Most significantly, Blatter plans to submit the 6+5 rule to the Fifa congress in Sydney in May. A Fifa spokesman said: "Until a firm agenda is finalised a few weeks before, we can't guarantee a vote, but the Committee meeting seems to indicate there will be a vote on the application of the rule." Barring an uncharacteristic change of heart by Blatter, Fifa's 208 member associations will be asked in May to vote "yes" or "no" to the introduction of the 6+5 rule. A simple majority carries sway in such votes, and a "yes" would set in train an extraordinary change in the world game, not to mention inevitable legal challenges.

The Football Association, which would have a vote, has gone on record as saying "we prefer meritocracy to quotas" but would not decide on a voting stance before consultation with Fifa "and the stakeholders of the game in England".

The FA's representative on the Committee, Trevor Brooking, was not at Monday's meeting, and the FA was unaware of any plan by Blatter to put the 6+5 rule to a vote in May. Under EU law, quotas preventing EU nationals from working in other EU countries are illegal, but Blatter believes the EU might listen to pleas for change because of "the specificity of sport in the new European Treaty."

He hopes that if football itself democratically votes for the quotas, the EU may allow them. As in all politics, yesterday's announcement is probably more the start of a bargaining position than anything.