It's also irrelevant.
You're attempting to show examples of players leaving their own domestic leagues to join clubs abroad and willingly taking a pay cut.
Bob's not being offered any money by his original employer. He doesn't have the option to stay with that company.
Okay, let me see if I've got this straight: it's relevant when you're using a deeply flawed argument, but when I expose just how deeply flawed that argument is - citing examples - then it's irrelevant?
Balotelli's wages went up, as his taxes dropped massively.
Kalou couldn't demand the same salary at Lille, because his stock had dropped massively.
Balotelli's weekly wage at City was more than it was at Milan. Get over it.
Kalou's stock certainly hadn't dropped: he was frozen out of the Chelsea squad under AVB, but under Di Matteo was getting playing regularly - so, if anything, his stock went up in half a season (just like Adebayor's last season, for another AVB-related example), and that's before considering that in two years at Lille and after his move to Hertha, his wages still aren't at the level they were at when he was at Chelsea even though he was showing the same form at Lille that he was in his best seasons at Chelsea
Tevez wasn't out of contract when he joined City and you've just brought him up. The previous quote was about Kagawa.
The Argentinian was owned by his agents.
Man Utd signed Tevez to a two-year contract in August 2007, a contract that ended on June 30th 2009. Tevez signed for City on 14th July 2009. Who was employing him in those two weeks? Nobody was, making him a free agent - a free agent who got a pay hoke when joining City.
As for Kagawa, I've explained that one - Prozone Recruiter supplies the data not just to Sports Interactive for the Football Manager games, but also clubs in various league. Everton have been using them since 2008, for example.
Samba didn't join Dynamo from QPR. I assume you're not debating that, so I'm not sure what you think your point is.
He's playing in the Russian league for a lot less money than he was in the Premier League.
Steve McManaman tanked at Factitious, yet that didn't prevent him getting into the England squad.
Platt was well established in the England team and joined a superior league, where he continued to play well.
Platt tanked at Juventus, barely getting any time on the pitch - but still got picked for England on a regular basis.
No, it doesn't. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm saying.
You're arguing with a point that I haven't made.
"Do many English players go abroad? No.
It's generally not worth doing so, both because they'd be paid less and because it could hurt their international ambitions.
The same is true of a number of other nations, to a slightly lesser extent. The Italian squad is full of players from Serie A, barring four exceptions.
The homegrown rule probably hurts any chance of this happening, as individual players become more valuable in one league than every other."
I countered this assertion by pointing out the numerous flaws in its logic, namely:
i.) The current Italian side is the worst its been in decades, so is it really good for the team to stay in Serie A when they're not developing to be at the level of the likes of Buffon, Maldini, Cannavarro, Pirlo, Gatusso, Baggio et al
ii.) Numerous international teams seem to be doing very well despite the core of their team not playing in their domestic league, such as all four of last years' World Cup semi-finalists
iii.) Plenty of the cannon fodder of international football have teams based within their domestic league
iv.) Saying that players become valuable in a league because of their nationality simply doesn't work, such as the examples of English players rotting on the benches of Chelsea and City
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
It's quite simple: saying that a league is or isn't strong misses the point entirely, and misses it by a huge margin. Using the Eredivisie as the perfect example, it used to be that a player would spend several years playing for Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord, they would develop as players, and move on. In the mid-90s there was an exodus of players to Serie A (Seedorf in 1995, Davids and Reiziger in 1996, Overmars and Kluivert in 1997, Stam and Zenden in 1998, van der Saar and both De Boers in 1999), but all of them spent at least five years at their Eredivisie clubs before moving on.
That's simply not the case these days: Robben spent two years at PSV before moving to Chelsea, Van Persie spent three at Feyenoord before moving to Arsenal, and so on. While this may have weakened the Eredivisie, it hasn't weakened the Dutch national team. Similar things can be said for several other leagues across Europe, notably Ligue 1 and the Primeira Liga.
If a player is good enough to play abroad, why don't they play abroad? For example, Tom Huddlestone would be a good fit for plenty of sides in Europe's top leagues, not least in Serie A where there's a long history of deep lying playmakers such as Pirlo or Veron having great success. And let's be brutally honest, he's not going to be getting an England call-up playing for Hull, as there's a long held belief that the shirt a player wears every weekend is an indicator of whether they should wear an England shirt. So if Huddlestone moved to a Serie A club that qualified for European football next season (so, sticking a pin in the current table, let's say Napoli) would that be worse for his England credentials than playing for Hull?
"Barca and Real don't sign many homegrown Premier League players and they certainly don't sign a majority of them."
I didn't say that it was good or bad for the national side, only that it happens.
That's the problem with the Premier League being this self-contained bubble: it can prevent a player from developing. There's the obvious examples of a player that follows the money and spends a couple of seasons counting it while they sit on the bench, such as Rodwell et al, but also the issue that staying put can be counter productive to their own game. Goin back to what I said about Huddlestone, he'd be a great fit on the continent as the game is played at the sort of pace that is perfect for his game - but in the Premier League, which places power and pace above all, his strengths are often negated not by the opposition but the tactics of his own team.
Yes, there's plenty of players who would get found out remarkably quick if they moved abroad - McManaman was when he was in Spain, Shearer regularly was in international tournaments - but that goes with the territory for pretty much any player moving abroad, yet that doesn't stop players switching one European league for another, let alone swapping a South American league for a European one. But when it comes to the idea of an English player moving abroad to further their careers and potentially improve their game, they're like a reverse Nigel Farage, demanding less emigration from Britain.
And, frankly, if they do worry that moving to Hamburg, or Lyon, or Fiorentina or whoever means they'd have to take a pay cut, there's one simple response to that: to ask why they place their bank balance growing ahead of their growing as a player. Priorities, FFS!
