MANCHESTER, England -- Galatasaray board member Ebru Köksal has criticised the Turkish Football Federation and the Turkish Super Lig for the restrictions imposed on foreign players.
In Turkey, the amount of foreign players that clubs are allowed to select in matchday squads has been increasingly limited over recent years. Currently the rules allow just eight foreign players registered with each club and only five foreign players in the eleven at any one time.
Speaking to ESPN FC at the Soccerex global convention, Köksal said: "It's a very restrictive and unfair regulation, and not serving the purpose either.
"Of course, we also support the need to have a country-wide policy for raising talent and getting more young Turkish players in the squads. But [the foreigner rule] is not the way to go about it because in the near term all it did was increase and skyrocket the prices of the Turkish players."
The Galatasaray board member suggested that Turkey, despite being outside of the European Union, should fall in line with other UEFA members and adopt a less strict non-EU players rule, rather than a non-Turkish players rule.
"Similar rules are applied in other countries but its for non-EU players, and even though we're not a full member of the EU, as far as UEFA are concerned, we are considered to be part of UEFA jurisdiction. Therefore, if the rule could have been changed to just include non-EU players it would have been fairer."
There was also a hint that this rule was a hindrance when attracting managers to Galatasaray, making the signing of players a more difficult process.
"It requires a more detailed squad engineering, actually, and even for example in the current composition of the squad, sometimes in order to put in a foreign player into the match you need to take out two foreign players," Köksal continued.
"So, [the coaching staff] are definitely not happy about it and again, solving problems in certain areas of the squad has been very difficult and complicated for them. But it has certainly not deterred them."