From 11pm on December 31st, the UK leaves the EU transitional arrangements. A spin-off of that is that, for the purposes of signing any non-British players, they must meet the Home Office's exemption criteria to obtain a UK work permit. This is as it is now for signing players from outside the EU, but will now apply to all EU countries as well. For footballers, the criteria are to have played at least 30% of a FIFA top ten country's internationals in the last 12 months, rising up to 70% of the internationals of a country ranked outside FIFA's top 30.
There will be an 'exceptions panel' to judge individual applications outside this, but it looks like it will make it a lot harder to sign up and coming French or Spanish players if they've not really broken into their national teams yet. I don't know how the regulations will apply to Irish players, as I thought the UK had a separate freedom of employment agreement with the Republic that stands alone from the rest of the world but not sure how that applies here.
There will be an 'exceptions panel' to judge individual applications outside this, but it looks like it will make it a lot harder to sign up and coming French or Spanish players if they've not really broken into their national teams yet. I don't know how the regulations will apply to Irish players, as I thought the UK had a separate freedom of employment agreement with the Republic that stands alone from the rest of the world but not sure how that applies here.
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