Quote:
Originally Posted by Liverpool
Unless you have an EU passport, going to Spain would be really, really, hard as La Liga teams are only allowed 3 non EU players on their roster. You have to be really ****ing good to play for a first team in La Liga. No other countries, that I know of anyway, have the same restrictions.
While this is true, it's also not hard to get nationalized in Spain for anyone from a hispanic country (this includes Brazil). The wait to apply for nationality for someone from South America is 2 years (players with double Mexican nationality qualify for the short wait). Casemiro, Marcelo, Messi, etc. are all legally Spaniards. Actually this is a problem for Madrid right now; they expected Valverde to be nationalized already, and so Rodrygo can't play in September as things currently stand.
My point was really that US football would benefit from taking its models from broader sources and encouraging its top talents to try new locales, particularly when young. English/German football culture are different than Spanish/Italian football.
It's like Zlatan said, when he was at his peak, he was playing in Europe.