The work permit system has a lot of flaws, one good example is with Man City and Nashat Akram.
Nashat Akram is a highly talented Iraqi playmaker, who at the young age of just 23 already has an amazing 66 caps to his name. He was chosen the second best player in Asia (which includes European based Asians), and was arguably the driving force behind Iraq winning the Asian Cup last year.
He was turned down simply because Iraq isn't a top 70 ranked nation by FIFA, nothing more.
We'd need to consider several systems and then create something that combines the good points of a few, rather than stick to one.
1 - English work permit system
The government (or in our case it'd be the TFF) regulates the players who can and can't be signed.
+ Regulates what comes into the league and what doesn't
- Why should a bureaucrat decide who's a good footballer and who isn't
- In the case of the TFF having the deciding power, they'll only abuse it to favour certain clubs. And even if they don't, it's what they'll always be accused of.
2 - Dutch minimum salary system
Foreign players signed must be offered a certain amount in salary, i.e., $200,000.
+ Ensures players don't arrive on slave labour rates
+ Forces clubs to think through their decision to sign players, a lemon will still cost them a good amount of money
- How do you find the 'magic number' here? For example Kayserispor has 10 times the budget of Sivasspor, let's not even bring Fenerbahce into this comparison.
- How do you do this with the lower leagues, you can't have a lower minimum to them
3 - French 'African' system
The French are allowed 4 non-EU players, but make exceptions for African players (i.e., don't count them against this quota).
+ I know Cypriot players have no issues, but if we don't do it with Azeri's and co., we definitely should incorporate it.
4 - UEFA's home grown player system
UEFA will eventually impose that of the 25 player squad list submitted to them, 4 players must be 'raised' by the club's youth system, and 8 in total must be 'raised' domestically, even if by other clubs, i.e., Arda transfers to Fenerbahce and is considered a domestic player, while Hamit also signs but isn't since he was raised abroad.
+ Ensures domestic players stay on the books of all clubs
- Age plays no part, for example Francesco Totti at 31 years of age is a 'Roma product'. A generation of decent domestic players could just be kept on a club's books to rot away at clubs on the bench, not too different to Kemal Aslan right now
5 - German Regionalliga system
Not sure if this is still in effect, but in essence the teams in the Regionalliga (third tier) had to have a certain number of domestic youth players in their match squad, I think the number was six domestic U21 players.
+ Ensures that teams are forced to develop domestic players, or at least poach them from other clubs. Either way players are forced through the system.
+ Top clubs could loan their players out to lower division clubs, the players develop and the lower division club benefits by getting talented youngsters to meet the criteria.
- Not something that could be done at the top division, or even the second division in Turkey. And the third division is a very low quality league which isn't likely to feed too many players up the leagues.
6 - Italian domestic trade system
Italian clubs are allowed to deal non-EU players freely domestically, but are limited to how many non-EU players they can bring in from abroad, i.e., Inter can sign as many foreign players as they want from every club in Italy, but can only sign one 'new Maradona' from Argentina.
+ Gives Anatolian clubs the purpose they want in life - inflating players and selling them to Istanbul
- I can see Turks exploiting this, i.e., Fenerbahce signing Diego Buonanotte from River Plate, using Istanbulspor as a proxy, so the player was signed domestically and uses up Istanbulspor's limit, not Fenerbahce's.
-/+ The above can be overcome by saying a player is free to move only after 6 or even 12 months playing in the league.
7 - Spanish player registration & reserve team systems
This isn't so much related to foreign players as it is a generally good system we should look to implement. Spanish teams must register their players, up to 25, to play for them that season. They also register players for their B and even C teams, 25 each, and players registered for one team (A, B or C) can play for the others. In Spain reserve teams are allowed to compete in the normal leagues, they just can't be promoted to the same leagues as eachother (i.e., Barcelona B can't be promoted to the top flight, Barcelona A can't be relegated to the second division without Barcelona B being put down into the third).
+ Putting a player registration, and limit restriction on the league goes hand in hand with enforcing some of the other restrictions that could be put forward.
+ Giving our clubs reserve teams playing at a competitive level might be just what the doctor ordered, imagine Ilhan, Kemal, Serdar, Can Arat, Gurhan and others playing in the second division in Turkey? Fantastic.
Bottom line - we can't make it a completely free system, it didn't help Belgium at all and they can still export players to EU leagues, something we can't do because they're held up by restrictions.
