Richard Masters, Premier League’s chief executive, said that the visa system imposed by the Football Association after Brexit contributed to Premier League clubs spending £815m during January's transfer window and called for it to be tweaked. 

Brexit prevents clubs from signing foreign players until they are 18 years of age and follows a points-based government body endorsement (GBE) system; an endorsement issued by the FA to a club for a non-EU elite player whose addition to the institution will develop football at the highest level in England. 

As such, Masters believes that this system was established to increase the number of English-qualified players in the Premier League instead of having clubs pay and benefit other non-English clubs. As a result, leaving the EU means being forced to pay a premium to sign the best-emerging stars.

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“We think it needs a bit of a tweak because it’s a very tight system that is much tighter than other sports in this country,” Masters told the Financial Times’s Business of Football Summit.

“We have generated an earned advantage over our European competitors, and a lot of that earned advantage goes to those European competitors in transfer fees for players that we can no longer buy at a younger age. It’s partially to do with the GBE system,” he added.

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