Manchester City To Face Possible Transfer Ban Like Chelsea?
By David Crook
Manchester City may yet join a group of elite European clubs who have been handed a transfer ban for breaching the strict regulations surrounding the acquisition of youth players.
In recent years Barcelona, Athletic Madrid, Real Madrid and now Chelsea have all been sanctioned by FIFA in relation to breaches in the strict regulations which govern the signing of youth team players. All of these clubs were initially subjected to a 2 transfer window ban and all of the clubs appealed the sanction to FIFA and eventually the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS). Whilst the appeals all ultimately failed in every case it did afford a delay to the implementation of the transfer ban allowing the clubs concerned to develop a single window transfer strategy to prepare for a ban (Real Madrid’s ban was reduced to 1 transfer window on appeal).
Chelsea were punished today and have already indicated they will appeal the sanction and one suspects this will be to ensure any ban does not start until after the next summer transfer window. Clearly the potential ban may mean that Eden Hazard owns all the cards in his ongoing contract negotiation and if he stayed I would expect him to become the highest paid player in the Premier League.
There are strict rules in place from FIFA to prevent the trafficking of young players. Youth players must not move outside of a certain distance from their home, unless they are EU Citizens where freedom of movement applies and their parents must not be involved in football related activity at the club. Many clubs have tried to secure the services of young players by paying inducements to the parents. Manchester City similar to a number of clubs pay for their young players to have a private school education at a top Manchester school.
There are also a variety of strict rules about Youth team contracts including the maximum length they can bind a youth player for and types of payments which can be made. Most of the bans which have been handed down to clubs have involved the transfer of players aged 16-18 who have moved countries. In those cases it would appear large sums have been paid to parents to smooth such deals.
City have previously been investigated and cleared by FIFA in relation to the signing of Benjamin Garre but the Football Leaks stories of last November indicated FIFA were looking into other transfers made by Manchester City and named the signing of Matthias Bossaerts as being of interest. Reports have emerged today suggesting Manchester City may be in a similar position to Chelsea.
One fact in the Chelsea sag which is interesting is that the FA have also been fined basically for not managing the FIFA rules properly. This provides Chelsea with a potentially interesting legal route to pursue against the FA if they had indeed cleared all of the deals concerned.
Notwithstanding all of this it would appear likely that Manchester City could soon find themselves embroiled in another piece of unwelcome publicity. Consequently it will be interesting to see if in preparation City continue to try to tie down young players to lengthy contract extensions and seek to complete their recruitment within the next window.