I realise that these days, many teams have a good amount of none national players as team members. But Barcelona seems a little bit more than that-they seem to take it one step further and really represent a lot of countries!
So are they the most varied nationality team there is-or is someone else more so?
Then the question becomes; why is it that teams are moving more for international players? There are players swapping countries-almost doing direct exchanges!! Why not just keep hold of the players that you grow at home?
Evan is right. This is a business and each and every person involved (either directly or indirectly) with the team is getting a cut of the pay somewheres.
The trend in the world of sports is to become more and more international as far as where they get their talent from. I could find a soccer team more international than this one. That doesn't mean there isn't one though.
The name of the game in most professional sports is money not where you come from. It's nice to have a home town boy on the team but it isn't always considered the best move for the team.
Nor is staying local likely to give you a good team. You just can't rely on there being talent locally-but at the same time it does make the sport a bit like politics.
While I agree Evan, it does make it a little like you can't get too into a team because a few years down the line the players you liked watching could be playing for eleven different teams. It's almost easier to get into a couple of players rather than a team.
Would it be asking too much if the total number of international players be limited to a particular ratio of the team roster. I think this would help to develop local talent
That happened in cricket for-I think it was the Pakistan or Indian national team. Suddenly they aren't doing so good this year....stating injury at the reason but there is speculation.
Similar has been done in the Scottish leagues and I fully support it.