Mikel Arteta urges Premier League to raise 20-player matchday limit
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta on 30 August 2026 urged the Premier League to increase the 20-player matchday squad cap, arguing the limit harms player welfare. He said expanding the matchday list would help squads cope with the demands placed on players by international fixtures.
Top-flight clubs in England can name 20 players for a match, including a minimum of three homegrown players, while La Liga allows 23 and Serie A permits 25. Clubs may register 25 senior players for the season, with at least eight homegrown, meaning five senior players registered for the season miss out on each game. Arsenal competed on multiple fronts last season, winning the Premier League, reaching the Champions League and Carabao Cup finals, and advancing to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, a context Arteta cited when pushing for change.
“I’ve been begging the Premier League if we can extend those numbers just for the welfare of the players, which is the most important thing, because I think every squad needs more than 20 outfield players, ideally, to sustain the level of demand in international games that we have,” Arteta said.
“The question has to be to the players. What do they want? If they raise their hands and say: ‘No, I prefer to stay at home and not travel,’ I think we have an issue because then they don’t love what they do, which is the matchday,” he added. “But I’m sure that if you ask the players, everybody would like to be part of the squad on matchday, because that’s the way that they can fulfil themselves.
“Otherwise you have to tell somebody: ‘You are not even part of this matchday,’ and that’s really tough. And it doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t help the club. It doesn’t help the valuation of the player. It doesn’t help the player feel part of something. It’s a real issue that has a really simple solution.”
“But these are the rules, and within the rules we have to play. We need to be very close to the players to explain those situations in the right way, for everybody to feel important, because they will be,” Arteta said, adding that he has researched practices at top European clubs. “And all the clubs, because I’ve done the research with all the top clubs in Europe, we are not different to anybody. Most of them, 90% of them, they have more players than us. So we are going to have to deal with that.”
Arsenal, the reigning champions, travel to Aston Villa on Monday night, the fixture Arteta cited as the immediate context for his appeal to the Premier League.