Management implications of foreign players in the English Premiership League football

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show how one of the biggest phenomena of the twenty-first century is the internationalisation of professional sports and how premier league football epitomises this. With the influx of foreign players, managers and now owners. Design/methodology/approach- Thu approach adopted id purely qualitative in nature, evaluating the top Barclays Premier League teams and the impact of globalisation on their reconfigurations since the early 1990s to date. The study draw,; mainly from a review of the extant oil sports and management. as well as a critical analysis of media reports. Findings - Globalisation has emerged as a new force that has changed the way Corporations are managed Financial services, retail and information technology firms have all responded to this new wave - and so also has sports. Unfortunately while sports have the potential to teach lessons oil management strategy, management researchers seem to have relegated sport,, to the sociology and psychology disciplines. Practical implications The Barclays Premier league. football provides it unique environment for managment decisions and processes to occur in a range of markets and at varied levels. However, the globalisation of professional sports has received relatively very little attention in the academic literature especially in the field of business and management. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the scant literature oil the management implications of football by highlighting how globalisation has affected and reconfigured professional sports using the influx of foreign players into the English football league as a point of departure.