Professional Footballers' Association Calls For Quota Of Three English Starters Per Side

Professional Footballers' Association CEO Gordon Taylor said that a "minimum of three home-grown players per side should be required to start Premier League matches," according to Alan Jewell of the BBC. Taylor said that the England team will "not improve unless more home-grown players are given the opportunity to play Premier League football." Taylor: "The success rate has not been good enough. If football had been a university, we would have been closed down." England was "knocked out of the World Cup in the group stages after failing to win a game." A State of the Game study for the BBC in October found that English footballers accounted for "less than a third of all the minutes played in the first two months" of the '13-14 Premier League season (BBC, 6/25).