How immigration rules affect football clubs in the January transfer window
Immigration lawyer Hateem Ali on how quotas on overseas players affect Premier League teams’ business during the January transfer window.
Although we now have a new government, we are unlikely to see any dramatic changes to the Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) rules which were originally implemented in 2021 following a lengthy consultation with the Football Association.
However, tweaks were made in 2023 to give clubs more leeway to sign players who do not meet the strict points-based system, and after a transitional period those rules came into full effect this season. This means that most Premier League teams have between two and four slots available for Elite Significant Contribution (ESC) players.
Whether a club gets two, three or four ESC slots is based on the number of minutes given to homegrown players during the previous season. The rules were designed to promote homegrown talent while also addressing clubs’ concerns that they would not be able to sign the best available overseas talent.
As we approach the end of the January 2025 transfer window, clubs must strategically manage their ESC slots alongside homegrown EQP minutes to optimise their transfer business – but herein lies the tension between GBE rules and Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).
An unintended consequence of PSR has been to make the sale of promising but untried homegrown players more attractive, as these sales are considered to be ‘pure profit’ in accounting terms because the club did not pay a fee to sign them. Clearly, this sits in direct conflict with the GBE rules, which were designed to reward teams that gave greater EQP minutes to local talent.
Additionally, the rules on ESC slots have been manufactured in such a way to reduce the practice of hoarding players and loaning them out to fatten them up for sale. Under the current rules, if a club loans out a player who was allocated an ESC slot then that player will not free up the slot, so effectively the parent club will have lost the benefit of it.
It should be noted that teams that utilise their ESC slots for an overseas player who then meets the GBE criteria (primarily by getting more game time) within 12 months would regain that slot.
For some teams, particularly those outside the Premier League’s top eight, the ESC regime offers opportunities to acquire real talent at a reasonable price – for example, Brentford’s signing of 18-year-old centre-back Ji-Soo Kim from K-League 2 side Seongnam FC, who might otherwise have not qualified under the stringent GBE points criteria.
What is clear is that over time ESC slots will become more and more valuable as they have opened the door for teams, especially those lower down the leagues, to access less traditional football markets which were previously placed out of reach by rigid work permit criteria.
Hateem Ali is a partner in the immigration team at JMW Solicitors in London.