England's World Cup Year 2014.

[AKCJ]

Never said that did I? None of them players you listed are the 'key player' to them sides though, that's what Wookie said about my posts.

Take any of those players out of those sides and you severely weaken them.

[Finnegan]

Reus has been Dortmund's key player this year, Reus, Gotze or Gundogun the year before.

I don't think Bayern have one set "key" player in the Messi / Ronaldo sense, most of their important players are German.

Juve likewise with Italians. It's basically just Zlatan, Messi and Ronaldo but they're freak examples.

[Stadt]

The point I was trying to make was that the important players for English clubs aren't English.

[Jimothy]

The point I was trying to make was that the important players for English clubs aren't English.

The most important players for nearly all top clubs around Europe aren't English and that's the issue. It doesn't matter for Spain, or Germany or France or Brazil or Argentina if they're top players are playing at top clubs in their country, just that they are playing at top clubs. Spain have big players at big clubs here, in Spain, in Germany. Same with Germany, France, Brazil etc their players are dotted all over and are big players for top teams.

Only Liverpool can really say they have a core of English talent currently playing for England, and whilst they had a good premier league season, they weren't in Europe, so I wouldn't exactly say those players are integral at one of the European powerhouse clubs right now. Chelsea and Arsenal probably had the best performances of English teams in Europe this year, coming up against those top teams we're talking about, and between the two teams, if you discount Terry, as he's retired from England, only Cahill played a massive role last season. Lampard had cameos, and Wilshere was injured most the time. Man City won the league, but only Hart played a massive part, Milner was very much a back up player. The rest of our squad were from teams I wouldn't exactly call top teams right now.

Suppose the long winded point I'm making is, it doesn't matter if top English clubs most important players are English, all that matters is any top clubs players are English. We have to start producing young talent that's going to tempt the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, etc to sign them, like we've been seduced into signing players from they're country. And obviously once we start producing these players our own teams will naturally want to use them too. No amounts of quotas is going to make this happen, and it's something that must be given time. Bringing in rules that force Man city to use Milner before Silva or Chelsea to play Josh McEachran instead of Oscar isn't going to improve our national team, the fact of the matter is they would start ahead if these players, and in fact clubs might not even sign these foreigners in the first place, if those English players were good enough in the first place. All quotas will do is push up the price of good English players as big teams try and stock pile the best English players they can get, even if they have no real intention of using them regularly.