Platini ponders new way to prevent tapping up of young talen
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Platini ponders new way to prevent tapping up of young talent.
Uefa is considering new rules that would compel players under the age of 18 to sign their first contract with the first club that trains them, in an attempt to prevent Europe's biggest clubs from tapping up all of the continent's best young talent. Michel Platini, the Uefa president, is said to be alarmed at the manner in which leading sides have begun approaching more and more players before they are old enough to sign adult terms, thereby minimising the level of compensation their present clubs are entitled to.
European labour laws have made it hard to impose such restrictions in the past, but Uefa was encouraged by the European white paper on sport, published last week, which called for stricter regulations on the transfer of young players and a strengthening of "the principle that players should sign their first professional contract with the club which has trained them".
"Our president has been talking about the idea that the first contract for a professional player should be signed with the club that has educated him in the academy," said Uefa's communications director William Gaillard. "He says that the biggest clubs have the best players and the best coaches - that has always been the case - but if they also have the best youth it's the end of football as we know it. So let's leave at least the young players for a couple of years with their original clubs so they can complete their education because there are a lot of cases all over Europe of terrible failures of very promising players that have been transferred very early, when still children, and haven't developed well and their career has been ended."
Gaillard said the practice was basically "youth trafficking" and was not ethical. "They are being brought over at a very young age and basically dumped in the streets if they don't make it," he added. "There have been some successes, like [the Arsenal midfielder Cesc] Fábregas, but you can count them on one hand. The president is talking to the whole football family because he wants some kind of consensus and then obviously we will discuss it during the French presidency of the EU."
Uefa also believes restricting the transfer of young players would give more opportunity for domestic teenagers to come up through the academies of the top clubs. They face opposition from players' organisations, however.
Mick McGuire, the vice-president of the international players' union Fifpro, said: "We are in no way in agreement with that because a 16-year-old and his parents have a right to decide with which club he signs his first professional contract." McGuire, who is also deputy chief executive of the PFA, said Fifpro accepted there was a problem with young players being dumped after failing to make the grade but that further discussions were needed from all of football about how to solve that issue.