Editor’s note: one good feature of WordPress is that tables should work natively on mobile, yay!
Tottenham Hotspur have been quite active in the transfer market this summer, and by all accounts, plan on being so going forward. There’s just one problem: how are Spurs going to register all of these players?
The short answer? They can’t.
Thanks to some wasteful spending and a lack of strategy from the front office over several years (plus some poorly timed injuries), the Tottenham Hotspur squad is in an uncomfortable state. With both European and English competitions to manage, meeting the requirements of the various football governing bodies in order to maximize the players you can register in these competitions is hugely important.
These aforementioned regulations are complex, cause confusion (even for the club at times), and mean some tough decisions are going to need to be made if Spurs want to make further signings… and even if they don’t.
This means that it’s time for a refresh of a piece I wrote around this time a year ago to clear up that confusion. I’ll go cross-eyed reading the regulations and translating them into plain English, so you don’t have to!
Premier League regulations
The first level of confusion is generated from the fact that the Premier League (and the other associated competitions run by the English FA) has different rules than UEFA competitions, such as the Champions League. Thankfully, the PL regulations are a fair bit simpler than those for Europe, so let’s break them down:
You can register a squad of up to 25 players.
No more than 17 of those players can be non-“homegrown”, meaning a total of 17 “foreign” players plus as many homegrown players as you want up to a total of 25.
A homegrown player is defined as one registered with an FA (or Welsh FA)-affiliated club for either 3 years or 3 seasons before their 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).
You can have unlimited under-21 players on top of that 25-player limit. An U21 player is defined as one who turns 21 during the same calendar year as the start of that season, or later.
The most complicated part here is homegrown status, for which the wording is just a little bit messy, but the rest is pretty logical, and Spurs are well set up to meet these regulations. Here’s the squad, broken down by the player type:
#
Non-homegrown
Homegrown
U21
Departures
* indicates likely/potential departures, either by loan or sale
In summary: 17/18 non-homegrown, 8/8 homegrown
As you can see, the squad is close to maxed out as it stands. There is one free non-homegrown spot, plus a decent possibility one homegrown slot will be available, with it taken up by academy product Matthew Craig, who has never played above League One level and is surprisingly still with Spurs. Spurs will need more space than that if they want to sign some of their rumored targets, however, so there is a reasonably urgent need to offload players.
The good thing around the U21 rules in the Premier League is that young players are immediately available if they fall into the age bracket. This is in contrast to UEFA rules, which require being registered to a club for a certain amount of time (we’ll get to the soon). Because of this, Spurs are really good value for money in that space, with a number of key contributors included in that category, helping keep the squad size in check while allowing for decent depth.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed one little quirk: Kevin Danso. Danso qualifies as homegrown in the Premier League thanks to his time in the MK Dons and Reading academies in his teenage years, before he headed to Germany. Unfortunately, this does not mean he qualifies as homegrown in Europe, as we’ll soon see.
UEFA regulations
Now things get more complicated (cue Avril Lavigne). The Champions League, in which Spurs are competing this season (in case you had forgotten), has a much more complex set of rules as to squad makeup. What makes this even more fun is the rules are written up in the most confusing legalese language possible. I’ve tried to simplify things a little below:
Like the Premier League, there is a 25-player squad limit, known as List A.
Also like the Premier League, you can have unlimited U21 players on top of that, with one additional caveat: they need to have been at the club for two years to qualify. This is known as List B. Importantly, this two-year period can’t include loans. If the player is loaned, it becomes three, rather than two years, and the loan must be to another English club. The clock for List B starts at 15, however, so it is unusual for most players around this age to have been on loan multiple times between the ages of 15 and 18.
The other similarity to the Premier League is a 17-player maximum of non-homegrown (known as “non-locally-trained”) players you can register in List A.
The other 8 spots are reserved for what UEFA call “locally-trained” players, split into “club-trained” players and “association-trained” players.
An association-trained player is basically the same as a homegrown player in the Premier League: three seasons or 36 months between the ages of 15 and 21 at clubs registered to the same FA with which Spurs are affiliated, and doesn’t qualify for List B. No more than four of these players can be named as part of the “locally-trained” set of 8.
A club-trained player is a player who has spent the same three season / 36 month period at that specific club before the age of 21, and doesn’t fall under List B.
There are some additional rules, but basically, to max out your 25-player squad, you need four club-trained and four association-trained players. Unfortunately, you can’t just sign young talent and put them on the U21 list either, because List B requires 2 years at the club before this can be done. Let’s break this down like we did with the Premier League Squad:
#
List A Non-homegrown
List A Association-trained
List A Club-trained
List B
Departures
* indicates likely departures, either by loan or sale; “ indicates players who are surplus to requirements on the List A Association-trained category, but qualify - they have been included on List A Non-homegrown, as that’s where they effectively fall
In summary: 22/17 List A Non-homegrown, 6/4 List A Association-trained, 2/4 List A Club-trained
In the Premier League, Spurs are near maxed out; in the Champions League, Spurs have a veritable excess. Several new signings, plus younger players that could become club-trained, but haven’t been at the club long enough yet means that the List A Non-homegrown category is well and truly overflowing.
It’s in that List A Club-trained space where Spurs really do struggle. The neglect of the academy over several years means Spurs have really not produced any decent contributors from that arm of the club in some time, and though Spurs have stepped up their efforts in that space (plus signed a number of young, talented players such as Lucas Bergvall, Luka Vuskovic, and Archie Gray), only one thing can help the squad construction in this area now: time.
Contrary to some of what goes around the media at times, though, Spurs are not really struggling for homegrown talent. The association-trained list is one area where Spurs are at a surplus, with six players falling under that umbrella. Unfortunately, only four players can go on that list, so that doesn’t really help Spurs maximize their squad (though it is good to have redundancy in case of unexpected departures, injuries, or drops in form).
What next for Spurs?
At this stage, the makeup of Spurs’ squad is not especially problematic when it comes to the Premier League, with some clear and obvious (VAR jokes? In this economy?) options to reduce the squad in the form of player sales. This means there isn’t really a level of urgency required when it comes to targeting homegrown players, though if Spurs want to maximize their squad, there is a slot there.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said when it comes to the Champions League. Even if Spurs sold or loaned all the players I denoted with an asterisk, they are well over the limit of players they are able to register. If Spurs went and signed Savinho tomorrow and wanted him to play in the Champions League, some tough decisions would need to be made.
What, then, can Spurs do if they want to make more signings?
The first thing they can do is to move on more players. I have (I think) been reasonably conservative above in terms of who Spurs might loan or sell; but there are some other names to consider here. Firstly, Ben Davies could still head out the door, especially if Spurs sign another defender (as has been rumored). Radu Dragusin, if he recovers in time, is another option (but an unlikely one). Kota Takai could head out on loan, but I would find that surprising, given his age, the fact he has just arrived in a new country, and his injury that he has battled with through preseason.
The other option is someone in the forward line. Spurs are clearly targeting attacking players, and that means somebody is going to end up the odd-man-out. At this stage, it seems like that player could be Wilson Odobert. He’s young, talented, but not that good yet - so a loan to a lower-level Premier League club could aid his development. Or hey, maybe somebody comes in and levies a ridiculous offer for somebody like Brennan Johnson or Richarlison that the club considers… but I think that is pretty unlikely.
The other route Spurs can go down is to not register players for Europe. This is generally seen as a pretty callous approach, but it’s not uncommon; we did see Djed Spence, for example, not included in the Europa League squad for the first part of the 24/25 season. That last part is key: if we don’t register players now, it doesn’t mean we can’t in the future. There is a new registration window in January, meaning if we have a player who we know has a medium-term injury, it may make sense to leave them off the UCL squad list for the first half of the season.
Radu Dragusin and Dejan Kulusevski may therefore be scratchings, depending on how their respective recoveries progress. James Maddison is unlikely to play again this season, so he’s an obvious one to leave off the list. Less obvious players to exclude could include (again) Ben Davies, Kota Takai, or Wilson Odobert. That puts Spurs at 14 List A Non-homegrown players, giving the club room for three more signings.
Of course, that does make for some tough decisions come January, when the likes of Dragusin and Kulusevski are almost certain to be fit; but that’s something that can be thought about in more detail further down the track. It’s a key matter for Johan Lange to manage, and has potentially hampered progress via the transfer window.
Can Spurs get more players through the door this summer, and how will they fit? Time will tell.