The debate about the transfer of under-18 players, while raging at football administration level for some time, was finally brought to the public attention in the past week following Chelsea’s heavy sanction by FIFA. The London club’s two window transfer ban for inducing Gaël Kakuta to leave Lens for England is perhaps the first shot in a war that is being incited by continental European clubs enraged principally by the actions of England’s major teams. At the heart of the debate are complex issues of youth employment, contracts, players’ rights and predatory clubs.
Motivated both to seek the best world talent and reduce their transfer fee burden, English clubs have been exploiting differences in employment law between the United Kingdom and European territories. Whereas the Premier League’s finest can sign a player onto a trainee contract before 16 years of age and enjoy the protection that it offers, clubs in France, Italy, Spain and Germany generally cannot.
Indeed, many continental clubs such as Barcelona, who lost Fabregas at 16, are able only to offer full professional contracts to players once they reach 16 years old, thereby risking losing the player on their 16th birthday. It’s a loophole that brought Cesc Fagregas, Federico Macheda, Giuseppe Rossi, Gerrard Pique and many others to England over the last few years. It is also this situation that has driven many clubs, especially those in France, to place their youth players on a ‘contract aspirant’ – a crude pre-contract agreement that is largely unenforceable in British law.
However, FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Committee ruling on Thursday last effectively ruled that not only did Kakuta’s pre-contract agreement stand, but that it was an enforceable contract with his club Lens. By offering Kakuta a wage Chelsea had thereby induced the player to break that enforceable contract.
One proposed solution – sponsored by both UEFA’s Michael Platini and FIFA’s Sepp Blatter – is a blanket international ban on player transfers under the age of 18. It’s a proposal seemingly endorsed by players’ groups too. Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers Association chair and FiFPro president, today called for such a measure.
“There’s been a general feeling that a ban on movement of players under the age of 18 would be better for the game,” Taylor told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek programme.
“Football is about competition. You can’t have all the best youngsters at the biggest, richest clubs.”
“You need to encourage clubs, if they’re going to have youth development programmes, to be able to pick out the lads and have some time with them.
“If they do move on, which may be inevitable you need a system whereby proper, effective compensation is paid. At the end of the day you can’t stop people moving but it’s about fair compensation.
“I don’t think this situation with Chelsea would have reached the stage it has now if compensation had been agreed between the two clubs.”
While a move to ban the transfer of under-18s may appeal on a superficial level, thereby negating the predatory instincts of rich powerful clubs, it is not a situation that is legally enforceable in any other industry. In Kakuta’s case the contract aspirant he signed at 14 would turn into a full three-year employment contract at 17. That’s a total legally committed time of six years for a player barely into his teens. In any other industry it would be deemed modern day child slavery.
A ban would, in theory, promote the continued development of the best youth talent. Why should clubs invest in training players, it is said, if they are allowed to leave without compensation?
But Taylor castigates the market for enabling the richest clubs to hoard youth talent, while the exact same processes are alive and well and enriching his members once a player is no longer deemed a ‘youth’. Under the current rules that dichotemy is not sustainable.
It is unsuprising that clubs such as Lens and Le Harve feel cheated by larger clubs which remove their better youth players without paying a transfer fee. But the problem with youth transfers highlighted by the Kakuta and Paul Pogba cases is surely a symptom of an industry that has become bloated at the very top level. Football as a community has allowed wages, transfer fees and the perpetual supply of money into the industry from the media inflate to truly unsustainable levels. At 18 Kakuta will earn close to £1 million per year without having kicked a ball for the Chelsea first team.
Firstly, football must become financially sustainable – spending only what it can truly afford. While the industry’s leading clubs are so heavily indebted it seems unlikely that UEFA or FIFA will act but act they should. Manchester United, despite the £700 million debt handed to the club by the Glazer family, are one of the few European elite clubs to rigidly stick to a rule that says wages (and bonuses) will not rise above 60% of revenues. It’s a sensible and enforceable cap that would simply require clubs to submit audited accounts prior to entering European competitions.
Only then will the game’s governing bodies have the moral authority to strip the industry of out-dated ‘tapping up’ and youth contract rules that are ignored by the leading clubs, overridden by market forces and unenforceable in European law.
It is a fact that large clubs will always attract the best talent, seeking the biggest wages. Why shouldn’t clubs speak to whomever they want, if the player is keen to have a conversation? This is after all the employment market that the majority of fans live in.
But an enforceable system of compensation based on both current player status and future success would meet the needs of ‘smaller’ clubs such as Lens when it comes to transfers, encouraging them to invest in youth. It would not enslave players who want to move on and – perhaps most importantly – it would continue to redistribute wealth from the top.
It’s obvious but then football it seems is yet to grow up.
I don’t think that u 18 transfers should be banned, but i think they should be limited to maybe only 1 per club every transfer window.
I think rather than banning transfers, a correct system of compensation should be set up.
Whilst money is surely an incentive, would you turn down an opportunity to make it at a higher level than you currently are? So no, don’t ban transfers, just make sure everyone is compensated properly.
I think that a ban on under 18s might actually be desirable — it would encourage the FA and English clubs to invest in homegrown talent, thus improving the national footballing standard as a whole. Foreign kids aren’t inherently superior to English ones, they just enjoy a far better standard of coaching from a very young age. If the time and money spent ‘poaching’ these continental youngsters was invested in grassroots English kids, the English game would be far stronger.
The British football authorities have created this problem for themselves with the crazy restrictions imposed by the 90 minute rule. Can’t imagine such restrictions being imposed on Barcelona or Milan or Real Madrid. Scrap the 90 minute rule and I’d be far more supportive of Gordon Taylor’s suggestions.
This can not be right. In England you can not get a trainee contract until you are 16, and a full (paid) contract only at 17. In Italy you can first get a full contract at 18, in Spain 16. Fabregas was “poached” just before he could have signed a full contract with Barcelona.
The age of 16, is relevant for three reasons 1) European employment law appears to preclude a full professional contract before 16 2) before 16 no international transfer is allowed and 3) as you say compensation before 18 is miserably low and does not reflect the skill or prospects of a particular player
Hence the problems with Leeds’ youth being poached before they could sign a trainee contract at 16. There is nothing to stop Le Havre “poaching” United youth at 16 before they sign a trainee contract, except they would not want to go! – and the scouts might get shot on sight at Carrington. An English trainee contract might also not be enforceable against international transfers, I know of no attempt to test this.
For FIFA to equate the various forms of one sided “contract aspirant” with a binding professional contract, which in effect is what they have done, is basically insane. It is highly unlikely that these agreements could be so considered under European, English, Scottish or even French LAW, whatever the respective FA’s may say. If the CAS repeat this insanity with Chelsea, or United or City get banned, then there will likely be a Katuja, Pogba or Helan ruling to go with Bosman and Webster.
As you say, the simple and easy answer is a mandatory system of compensation for all transfers of minors based on both current player status and future success, such as the PFCC ruling for Leeds. This should perhaps be worldwide so that African clubs are no longer shafted either.
Not quite, in England :
– A player under 17 years of age may not enter into a contract of employment with a club except under a Scholarship.
– Players on or after their 14th birthday may be offered a Scholarship to commence no earlier than the last Friday in June in the academic year in which they will reach the age of 16
– On or after a Player on a Scholarship’s 17th birthday, the Player may remain on a Scholarship or may sign as a Player under written contract
– Clubs have “entitlement” to turn Scholarships into pro contracts.
Essentially all that FA jargon means that clubs in England can get their trainees registered with the FA from 14 and probably on a Schloarship by 15 and seamlessly move them from schoolboy, to Scholarship to pro registrations. Barcelona’s problem was that they had no protection prior to Fabregas turning 17. In theory overseas clubs could only poach players aged 14-15 from England where no Scholarship has been offered. And in that case, they’re probably not very good.
This sounds essentially like the French system which English clubs have consistently ignored as unenforceable.
Leeds players at 16 who had not (yet) signed “scholarship contracts” were vulnerable to Everton and Chelsea, so the system of protection is apparently not that hot. Why are Crewe worried about Liverpool sniffing around their 15 yr old then.
Do you know of any transfer of an English 16 or 17 yr old to another country which has tested the enforceability of this internationally? Is there a FIFA or UEFA ruling that an English scholarship contract (which is not employment in its normal usage) is a contract in FIFAs usage which could be breached? With or without the ““entitlement” to turn Scholarships into pro contracts” which sounds very like a contract aspirant, equally one sided and possibly never tested in law.
I can not actually remember a minor transferring to another country at all, perhaps Scotland, where you can get a full (paying) contract at 16. I suspect it is fairly simple: no one in Europe wants our 16 years olds that much and they would not want to go anyway.
All of which would be fairly irrelevant if there was a sensible system of compensation.