Gordon Taylor calls for tighter rules over 'home-grown' players

Gordon Taylor: The PFA chief said current 'home-grown' rules are ineffective (Getty Images)

Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, has thrown his support behind Football Association chairman Greg Dyke's call for urgent change to help the England team and wants to see quotas of at least four "home-grown" players in clubs' starting XIs.

Taylor said, however, that such a rule would have to be applied across Europe in order to be fair and called on Uefa and Fifa to strengthen the regulations.

The Premier League currently stipulates that clubs must include not more than 17 overseas players in a 25-man squad – but allows any number of Under-21s of any nationality. Uefa's rules oblige at least eight "home-grown" players – those of any nationality but who have spent three years between the ages of 16 and 21 coming through a club's academy – in 25-man squads.

Taylor claimed that was just window dressing, and that quotas should target starting line-ups. The PFA chief, who said he had been advised by lawyers not to comment on recent allegations in a newspaper about gambling debts, said: "Throughout the world, and of course in England as the oldest and richest of all the football countries, there should be a duty to the next generation that their aspirations to reach the top level should become a reality if they are good enough and not remain a dream.

"The current 'home-grown' rules are just paying lip service to the idea – they don't have any real impact. I believe there should be four home-grown players in every starting XI and that it should apply at least in Europe, but ideally across the world. Fifa and Uefa have to address this, along with us in England."

Taylor, who will accept any offer of a place in the commission being set up by Dyke, also claimed that the PFA had first raised concerns about England almost 20 years ago.