The author has a point I think. Only last week I clicked on the BBC website to follow some Champions League penalty shootout or other (it might have been Real - Man City), and, whilst players scored and missed, it wasn't easily possible to identify the team from the players' names (unless you knew them, of course).
Guys like Bernardo Silva (POR), Ederson (BRA) and Julian Alvarez (ARG) play for an English club, whilst guys like Bellingham (ENG), Kroos (GER) or Modric (CRO) play for a Spanish side.
Many, many clubs (not just the BCC) have or at least try to become global entities: global players, global managers, global fanbase, as the author states correctly. Leicester City is no exception, it's the way things go it seems. More than half of the current LCFC squad aren't English.
And it's particularly interesting that the financial rules on profitability might rather encourage the sale of a local lad such as KDH, as the profit for homegrown talent with a purchase value of zero is bigger!
And they are gearing the whole football set-up more and more towards that: more and bigger international tournaments, less national ones. They've shrunk the FA Cup but expanded the Champions League and the World Cup, among others.
It's a trend that gradually erodes the local fanbase, (partial) exceptions notwithstanding, such as Vichai who at least understood and tried to nurture the local connection. Not sure where it's headed but it won't change as long as there is an expanding market with many people willing to pay for all this.
Edited to correct a mistake re LCFC players (more than half of them aren't English).
www.theguardian.com
