A Guide to squad registration, will United have a problem registering the squad to UCL/PL and what does it tell us about transfer moves.

TL;DR: NO and some minor stuff only, nothing major.

I am sure you have heard about so called “Homegrown players” and how something about how they relate to squad registration.

Well if you go by google searches you might find something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homegrown_Player_Rule_(England)

The Premier League proposed a maximum of 17 non-“homegrown” players in each club squad, and the squad size is a maximum of 25. This means that in a full squad of 25 players, there must be at least eight homegrown players.

Or this: https://theathletic.com/4570609/2023/06/04/liverpool-homegrown-players-transfer/

Since the Premier League introduced its homegrown rule in 2008, teams have been required to name a minimum number of players who have either come through the club’s own youth academy or another English side’s academy.

You might rightfully think that there is a minimum number of players that have to be these so called “homegrown” players. Except, through no fault of your own, you’d be wrong, there are no lower limits to having “homegrown” players, only upper limit to non-homegrown players.

The CL and PL squad rules are very similar with the CL being a bit more restricting, so let’s start with how the PL squad rules work.

PL squad registration rules

Each team can register an unlimited number of U-21 players, for the 23-24 season this means any player born after January 1st of 2002 (Feel old yet?).

Furthermore each team must submit a registration of the main squad consisting of at most 25 players.

Basically 25 slots to manage, 17 of these slots are open to anyone, 8 are restricted to homegrown players.

So what does it mean to be Homegrown player?

PL (Technically English FA) homegrown player

A neat article from 2016/2017 spells it out quite explicitly: https://www.premierleague.com/news/465277

An HGP means a player who, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to The Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

And that’s kinda it, not really restrictive, kind of easy, no restriction on nationality or anything, just have to spend 3 season at an FA or FAWales club as a U21 player.

I will summarize later, but If you wanna see how our squad looked like at the latest registration here is the update from February: https://www.premierleague.com/news/3044867?sf263935540=1

CL Squad registration rules

Sources:

https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/026c-12ed33745f21-a63cc70aaed6-1000--champions-league-group-stage-squads-player-registration-dead/

Note: UEFA article uses “locally trained” instead of homegrown.

https://www.goal.com/en/news/champions-league-squad-rules-number-of-players-homegrown-quota-regulations-explained/blt14eefb4daa8bb717

In the CL there is also a 25 man squad limit, this is called A-list.

Of the 25 slots, 17 is open to any player and 8 to homegrown players (with further restrictions). Once again this is an upper limit for the 17 open slots, there is no minimum of homegrown players:

If a club have fewer than eight locally trained players in their squad, then the maximum number of players on List A is reduced accordingly.

Meaning if you have 0 homegrown players you only get the 17 open slots.

U21, here called List B, much like the PL has no upper limit in terms of number of players, but does introduce further restrictions:

A player may be registered on List B if he is born on, or after, 1 January 2002 and has been eligible to play for the club concerned for any uninterrupted period of two years since his 15th birthday by the time he is registered with UEFA – or for a total of three consecutive years with a maximum of one loan period to a club from the same association for a period not longer than one year. Players aged 16 may be submitted if they have been registered with the club for the previous two years without interruption.

Put simply the player has either played at the club for: 2 years in a row 3 years in a row with the second(middle) year being a loan within the same FA

I say second/middle year otherwise obviously they already qualify under the 2 years in a row rule.

Another rule that I don’t see mentioned regarding the PL squad rules is that UEFA requires 2 keepers on the A-list and one keeper on the B-list to have a total of 3 keepers.

Homegrown differences

The homegrown players are split into two categories, homegrown players FA wise and Club trained homegrown players, let’s called these HGFA and HGC from now on for simplicity’s sake.

4 slots are reserved for HGC players and 4 for HGFA players, this is a further restriction.

To quote:

HGC:

Club-trained players who were on a club’s books for three years between the ages of 15 and 21.

HGFA:

Association-trained players who were on another club’s books in the same association for three years between the ages of 15 and 21. No club can have more than four association-trained players among their eight ‘local’ nominees on List A.

This means players like Maguire, Sancho, AWB cannot go into the same slots as players like Rashford, Shaw (he just makes the cutoff) can go into.

Why we might care

well depending on what players we sell and buy we can maybe get some insight into what the transfer strategy is going to be looking forward

So how does our squad currently look?

First let’s look at our squad registration from February for the PL, with some updates

Open slots:

  1. DDG Onana
  2. Dalot
  3. Malacia
  4. Lindelof
  5. Varane
  6. Martinez
  7. Casemiro
  8. Fernandes
  9. Eriksen
  10. Fred
  11. Sabitzer Open
  12. Van de Beek
  13. Antony
  14. Martial
  15. Weghorst Open
  16. Taken by HG
  17. Taken by HG

HomeGrown Slots

  1. Bishop
  2. Butland
  3. Heaton
  4. Shaw
  5. AWB
  6. Brandon Williams
  7. Maguire
  8. McTominay
  9. Rashford
  10. Sancho

So as we can see at the moment we have really no issue registering players, we had 2 out of the 17 slots taken by homegrown players.

Further 2 were opened by the exit of Sabitzer and Weghorst.

And Onana was just a drop-in replacement for DDG.

A noteable change here, Pellistri was born in December of 2001, and he would have to take one of these open slots if he was registered.

The other player that has crossed the U21 cutoff is Greenwood, we don’t talk about Greenwood (but he would count as HGC obviously).

Amad Diallo doesn’t fullfill the U21 criteria, he has been here for 2 years but one of them was a loan, the half of the other one too, so he would presumably have to go on the A-list if he stays

So let’s assume there only 13 of the open slots taken, since we don’t know what will happen with Amad and Pellistri.

Now let’s look at how we look for CL, here obviously HGC players have an even higher value since they can occupy any of the 25 slots, while HGFA players can only occupy the 17 open and the 4 “locally” trained slots.

HGC Players:

  • Rashford
  • Shaw
  • Brandon Williams
  • McTominay
  • Heaton
  • Dean Henderson (not registered last year)
  • Matej Kovar

HGFA players:

  • Bishop
  • Maguire
  • AWB
  • Sancho
  • Mount

Now there are some rumors of further outgoings.

Some rumored exits:

  • Fred - Open
  • Van de Beek - Open
  • Bishop - HGFA
  • Maguire - HGFA
  • Dean Henderson -HGC
  • Brandon Williams - HGC
  • McTominay - HGC
  • Pellistri (Loan)
  • Amad (Loan)

So what can we deduce from this huge information dump?

GKs:

Well, I think we can safely say, with Henderson one leg out of the club, one of Heaton/Kovar stays, latest info is that ETH wants to keep Heaton. so we will see which one stays, but both of them Qualify for the HGC slot in the CL so they are both very high value.

Outfield players

HGC:

Well Rashford and Shaw both got long contracts So 2 slots are taken. 3 with one of the GKs expected to stay.

What this means that we can easily sell one of Mctominay or Williams, but after one of them has been sold, the price of the other one should go up, since we would be giving up one of the 25 slots in the CL squad registration, and bodies might be needed to handle any possible injury crisis.

HGFA:

Here Mount and AWB are not leaving and both Sancho and Maguire would require huge transfer fees to not be losses on the books, since bishop is likely being sold, that means we only have 4 players for 4 slots

This means Maguire is even less likely to be sold, though to be fair, Evans would be considered a HGC player if he is signed to be as 5th choice CB as his replacement, which makes his exit a bit more likely.

Not to mention a Sale of Maguire + Mctominay could fund Kane, which is totally happening btw, trust me bro. So Kane + Evans is the same amount of HGC/HGFA slots.

Open Slots:

Fred is likely being sold, which would lower the total taken Open slots to 12, meaning we have room for 5 non homegrown players.

One slot will be presumably (hopefully) taken by Hojlund, bringing the total back up to 13.

If Amrabat is signed to replace fred and we need the slots to register both Pellistri and Amad we still have only used up 16 of the 17 open slots.

This means the club is not in the position of having to sell players like Martial or VDB on the cheap to free up slots.

Note: I just remembered Baily is still our player, probably also not for long, but he can also be registered if needed, probably won’t be.