Which club would be the World's best if a rule was in place saying you can only sign players who came from a 30 mile radius of your home stadium?
I haven't thoroughly researched every team, but it seems to me that Barca, Real, Man U, Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea etc, while able to put out a team, would not be the dominant force that they are now.
Much like a country such as Wales, where extraordinary talent such as Ryan Giggs, and Ian Rush hail from, a club may unearth one or two local jewels, but never enough to win anything.
I mean, originally, Association Football pitted the best from one town against the next. Certain clubs would benefit if they had a nearby army base to draw from (particularly during times of National Service).
In those days, you could get an indication of where the best footballing talent came from.
Nowadays, clubs can sign players from anywhere so we have the situation where England (supposedly) has the strongest collection of clubs yet never win anything internationally. Maybe this year, domestic football will replicate international football with Germany proving that a strong domestic league doesn't necessarily weaken the national team.
I just wondered, because Pro League teams have a very small pool to draw from. Look at the area that Brazilian clubs can draw from or Argentinian clubs or even France and Germany. So when we say Brazil is the best, or Spain is the best, they have a player pool 100 times larger than T&T. Therefore, their domestic teams have advantages over teams from countries like T&T, Jamaica etc.
But if say, Caledonia had the top players born in T&T could they beat Man U or Real Madrid if they fielded only local players?
So when we measure T&T football against other nations, are we using the correct barometer? If we lose 3-0 to Mexico, is that actually bad? Would we still lose 3-0 if Mexico could only select from an area of the country with 1.3 million in it? (like a regional side)
T&T have a huge disadvantage, yet many supporters forget this when we play internationals. Peru is the Worlds 20th largest country and has 30 million people, so shouldn't they have beaten us 20-0?
So, maybe, per capita, T&T are actually better than Brazil???