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Foreign player quota could hinder English players' progress - Les Reed

Former Football Association technical director Les Reed has warned a foreign player quota could hinder rather than help English footballers' progress.

The country is still in a process of reassessment after Roy Hodgson's men suffered a galling Euro 2016 last-16 exit to Iceland, while the backdrop has shifted markedly following Brexit.

The move to leave the European Union led prospective Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to suggest a "quota" on foreign players in the opening address of the Soccerex Global Convention.

The Labour MP said England's performances during the Premier League era "quite frankly isn't good enough," but Southampton's executive director of football Reed does not believe bringing in a quota is necessarily the answer.

"Over the last two years, we've provided more youth international players to all the development squads for the national teams than any other Premier League club," he said of work at St Mary's.

"It is partly what we want to do at our club, but the national teams are benefiting from that.

"But what's very important for me and, where I disagreed a little but with what Andy Burnham was saying this morning, are players still with us like James Ward-Prowse and Matt Targett.

"They were among the five players we had in the under-21 squad that won the Toulon tournament. James Ward-Prowse was the captain and scored yesterday at West Ham in the Premier League.

"I think what has made him the player he is that every day in training he is having to compete with Jordy Clasie, Oriol Romeu, previously with Victor Wanyama and Sadio Mane, players like that.

"That's made him a better player and I think if we were to introduce quotas and dampen it down a bit to give English players more opportunity, we might be taking that opportunity away to develop away from them.

"It's not the 90-minute match on a Saturday -- that's the peak of it but it is what do they do Monday to Friday, and we have a large number of players who train with the first team every day and given the opportunity to play they get that chance. That to me will benefit the national team."

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