Abstract
The training and development of young players both as athletes and individuals is one of the task soccer governing bodies assign to professional soccer team in order to fully exploit the social aspects of sport activities. Recently UEFA imposed new rules to improve the use of home-grown players. We analyze a panel data of English Premier and Championship league clubs for the seasons 2001-02 to 2005-06 in order to understand what clubs characteristics lead to the employment of young players in the team during official matches. Sport commercialization and the employment of star players have been considered harmful to this role. Our findings suggest that, counter-intuitively, economic and commercial aspects of clubs are not important for the development of home-grown players, for example well paid players do not crowd-out home-growns. Managerial policies play a significant role. Major clubs in the Premier league deploy home-grown less often; leasing them to the Championship league could be a solution. Attendance favors home-grown players, which hints at a more active communication policy for the clubs in order to nurture the link with the local community. These results suggest social responsible strategies for Premier League clubs in order to improve their perceived social role and to avoid invasive interventions from national and international governing bodies in their managerial decisions on the clubs.
Highlights
Political institutions are very much concerned on education and training of the young athlete, these are considered areas in which to implement active policies with the aim to pursue a societal role for sport
We focus on the role of professional soccer clubs in caring and nurturing young athletes and we analyse integrative theories which consider that business ought to integrate social demands
We focus on home-grown players, who have received constant attention by political institutions and sport governing bodies
Summary
Political institutions are very much concerned on education and training of the young athlete, these are considered areas in which to implement active policies with the aim to pursue a societal role for sport. Nurturing the young athlete is another area of interest in which political institutions have requested sport governing bodies to be active in guiding professional teams, oftentimes generating discontent. One of these policies require teams to preserve a quota to locally trained players, as fostered by the European Commission. European professional soccer clubs opposed this ruling on the basis that it is not compatible with free movements of persons inside the European Union. It is sustained that any eventual indirect discrimination effects, resulting from this rule, can be justified as www.ccsenet.org/ibr
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