Winning football’s war for talent: highly skilled migration and the making of the English Premier League

Richard Elliott

Abstract

The English Premier League (EPL) has undergone a significant commercial and economic transformation in the last 30 years. During this period, labour migration has emerged as a pre-eminent process in the development and competitiveness of the league. For the EPL’s 20 clubs, the desires to remain both commercially and performatively competitive on a global stage necessitates the requirement to identify, attract and retain as many highly skilled workers as possible. Therefore, like other talent intensive industries where success is predicated on the depth of the talent pool, a global ‘war for talent’ has emerged. Drawing on scholarship that has explored the recruitments of highly skilled migrants in other talent intensive economies, this paper shows how EPL clubs are consistently winning the global war for talent that has emerged in professional football. It also highlights the significant role that these workers play in the making and continued re-making of the EPL.