Brexit XI: Which Premier League players could have missed out on transfers to England?
The EU facilitated the transfers of some of the Premier League's top players
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Your support makes all the difference.Having voted to leave the European Union, Britain’s future in all aspects of life has become unclear.
The uncertainties the country now faces are not exclusive to the world of economics and politics, however, but will inevitably come to redefine the landscape of the sporting world too.
In particular, experts have predicted that withdrawal from the EU could inflate football transfer fees and impose new work permit rules for Premier League clubs.
Currently players from the EU can live and work within Britain without a work visa but this will undoubtedly change as Britain embarks on the long and arduous process of dissociating itself from Brussels.
As it stands, players who don't have the requisite number of competitive international caps would not have attained an automatic visa to work in the UK and, as such, clubs could have been prevented from making their transfers.
This means that a number of star players, including N’Golo Kante and Dimitri Payet, would not have played in the Premier League last season had the UK already left the EU.
And although the 108 European players registered to play in the Premier League are unlikely to have to leave following the outcome of the vote, new players will no longer have an automatic right to play in the league.
Keith Harris, a leading corporate financial advisor, told Sky that “It was a shock result” for the country and the Premier League too.
“There are four players that we can reflect on and the impact they had on their clubs last year, who may not have been able to come in,” he said.
"Kante, who had a huge impact at Leicester, Martial at Manchester United, Lukaku at Everton and Payet at West Ham.
"I wonder how attractive the Premier League would have been and how well those clubs would have done without those specific players, and that's the kind of thing we are now speculating about."
See above for our starting XI of the Premier League footballers whose transfers were all made possible by the EU.
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