Smug clubs should pay price for child trafficking
Even King Fergie would agree football is the winner
In defeat at Burnley, Ferguson saw why he's besotted with the game.
THE damning indictment of Chelsea Football Club is not the harsh punishment meted out by FIFA.
It is the fact that, blinded by smugness, they never saw it coming.
The sort of smugness that convinced them they were doing nothing wrong when they took Ashley Cole for elevenses at a London hotel.
That they were pushing no ethical boundaries when they invited an England manager for a cup of tea at their owner's London mansion.
Or that there is any sort of excuse for their players behaving like demonic hoodlums because a decision went against them.
You can buy Didier Drogba. You can buy Michael Essien. Hell, you can even buy the Premier League title. But you can't buy class.
Not for one minute do I believe Chelsea are unique in tapping up talented foreign youngsters.
The traffic in child footballers - most of it one-way towards a country that was once proud of its tradition of rearing young, homegrown footballers - is obscene.
And it is a traffic marshalled by ALL Premier League clubs.
Loopholes
Don't let anyone here take the high moral ground.
We laud Arsene Wenger. Lap up his intellect. Simper at his suave snippets of wisdom.
And all the time, he is diving through loopholes that scar the game of professional football. That it breaks no law makes it no less improper.
In the same way Cesc Fabregas was plucked from Barcelona's academy, Sir Alex Ferguson has taken a 16-year-old pride and joy named Paul Pogba from Le Havre.
And then there's Federico Macheda, spirited away from Lazio a day after his 16th birthday.
At the time, the Italian club's president, Claudio Lotito, claimed United had offered Macheda's parents "important jobs". United insist they acted within the rules. Maybe. But that doesn't mean it is within the bounds of decency.
Sepp Blatter would agree.
I have no particular fondness for Blatter. Nor for FIFA.
Nothing makes the blood boil more than to see FIFA and UEFA hangers- on rocking up at a showpiece game in their chauffeur-driven limos, suitably tanned after a congress in the Bahamas. But if Blatter is planning a zero tolerance policy against clubs who indulge in malpractice when recruiting boys barely out of school, then good on him.
And if those clubs belong to the Premier League, so be it.
This is no vendetta. No anti- English bias. And the fact that some people within our game believe it is shows just how delusionally self-important we have become.
It's a self-importance, by the way, that runs seamlessly from club to country.
In the case of Gael Kakuta, Chelsea have been found guilty of breaking the rules and, for once, have been punished accordingly.
The boasts about being the richest league in the world have been so loud that even the old dodderers at FIFA have now heard them.
That is why they realise fines alone constitute no punishment at all.
Spending money is what Chelsea are good at.
It's what all the Premier League's Big Four are good at.
UEFA wants to introduce a rule banning the international transfer of players under the age of 18.
Let's hope it gets its way. At least then, smaller clubs who have nurtured a local boy since he was eight - in the way Le Havre have reared Pogba - will be able to get proper financial compensation when the Premier League comes calling, not get stiffed.
Seedy
And then maybe Premier League clubs will pay more attention to developing their own talent rather than sending agents and scouts on seedy hunting missions across the globe.
Who knows? It might even produce an English Champions League- winning side in which the majority of players are homegrown.
Or even a national team with the depth and class to win a major tournament.
And then we'd all have something to really be smug about.
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* Andy Dunn's column appears in the News of the World every Sunday.
This article has 12 comments
Rooney is a major accident waiting to happen.
Hes learned little in recent years and his temprament could yet cost us a key match in the WC.
By H.O.B. Posted September 19 2009 at 11:55 PM.
ANDY DUNN
Rooney loves United as much if not more so then playing for England.
He commited his career to the club the day he signed. You don't do that if it's just a job...get your facts right.
By James. Posted September 15 2009 at 11:02 PM.
Andy,you really connot be serious when you contend that Rooney is, or has the potential to be a better player than Messi and Ronaldo! Hate to say it but it aint gonna happen. Hard work, determination, passion, stamina all typical English traits just dont, and never will measure up when up against teams that rely on skill and technic; Spain, Brazil etc.I love the little wassa but with his back to the goal he´s ordinary and that is a long way from world class. Less flannel please, lets not get carried away and fall into the familiar trap of hybris.
By ROBERT CHILD. Posted September 13 2009 at 3:17 PM.
Academies Dunny.....
the result of the F.A.'s own "Blueprint for football", which gave us both the academies and Premier League....
How ironic that the loser in all this "progress" has been the national team, which now has players taught to dive and a pool of talent for the national team that is not even ankle deep and still features a majority of players with one foot that is only good for standing on..... (iven their proclivity for diving, perhaps we should call it their launch leg?) And has singularly failed in nearly 20 years to provide a single international class goalkeeper.
And all this was done in the "blueprint" to improve the prospects for the national team.... by grabbing control of the elite from Lytham.
There used to be a sport, in which honesty and self respect were important elements. Now there only exists the Premiership..... woo-bleeding-hoo
By Damien. Posted September 6 2009 at 10:49 AM.
I am still of the opinion that the drivers for these behavioural practices are:
1. A lack of harmonisation in employment law concerning U18s - measure number one to be implemented, preferably by the EU, but in the interim by UEFA and FIFA.
2. A lack of an analogy to the 'patent' concept where training footballers is concerned. If I discover some technology through hard work and patent it, then anyone in the world has to pay me to use it. The point of the system was to protect and to encourage invention and innovation rather than shameless copying and stealing. It should be the same for clubs spending a decade developing a footballer. This is the domain of FIFA, since any system must be global to work.
3. Poorer regulatory environments allowing agents and Club officials to profit from foreign 'signings' in ways which have been outlawed in the domestic market place. A centralised 'transfer system' and absolute accounting transparency are required to stop abuses there.....
In the never ending world of 'who blinks first', regulation must come from the top and from outside.
By Rhys Jaggar. Posted September 6 2009 at 10:32 AM.
The Fa are to blame for the big English clubs going abroad because of the silly rule stopping English clubs from looking for players outside their own city. The Fa thinks that small local clubs will find these players which has not happened in my town because they don’t have a youth system in place. The best English players are now being lost to other trades. The old System saw many good English players coming through at all the top clubs. Now there is only the odd good English player and the rest are average because they have leant their trade at a small club. Top players need top coaches and top set ups to bring out the best in them.
By Carl warmington. Posted September 6 2009 at 9:46 AM.
This is a very serious issue. The players we hear about that are trafficked are the lucky ones, as they have made it as professional stars. Wenger has an academy in Thailand where he send boys from Africa as young as 8 years old! Others that come from Africa that don't make it spend a life on the streets (prevalent in France).
By David . Posted September 6 2009 at 9:57 AM.
Football is yet again in the spotlight, getting dragged into the mud by individuals and clubs in search for the elusive Star quality. I think this will open a can of worms and other clubs will jump on the wagon now to see what they can get out of it or what damage they can do. This is arrogance at it's best, are these clubs not happy with their lot.?Diving, poaching, what next.?
By paul. Posted September 6 2009 at 8:30 AM.
the problem here is not about transfers,it is about poaching.different employment laws exist in different countries allowing english and some other countries to exploit these loopholes.it's up to fifa and eufa to adopt a set of rules applicable throughout the footballing world for all clubs not just for kids but also for third party ownership
By bill. Posted September 6 2009 at 1:37 AM.
If clubs were banned from signing younger players we would have never heard of lionel messi. River Plate couldn't afford the hormone injections he needed because of his lack of height ( he would have ended up 4ft 5") but Barcelona signed him on the basis they would pay the money for the injections.
What needs to be addressed is the compensation system. Clubs are paying teams peanuts for future stars. Clubs should get a % of future sell-on fees.
By Ronan. Posted September 6 2009 at 12:22 AM.
I think that in this instance that some of the blame rest's it our own FA. Ever since they brought in that stupid rule of banning clubs in England from signing schoolboy players who live more than 90 miles from the club of their choice, clubs have decided to bypass this by concentrating their efforts on the continent and Sth America. If this rule existed yrs ago, football might never have seen the full talents of Best,Charlton,Beckham and many more who chose Man Utd as the club to learn their trade.
While Platini and Blatter decide which premiership club to hold to account next,maybe Barca who shipped the Messi family to Spain when Lionel was just 13 might also be a target. But........they're not English are they!
By steve. Posted September 6 2009 at 12:12 AM.
It is all very well banning international transfers for under 18's, but what about the British clubs from the lower leagues who get mugged by the Premier League teams? This would make things worse for them. The only way to stop this altogether is to make all youth contracts run until a player's 18th birthday. By the age of 18 a much fairer price could be agreed on.
By Martin Bailey. Posted September 5 2009 at 10:49 PM.