Child Catching

It seems the media have got bored with the diving fuss already and moved on to the next big storm; child catching.

This all kicked off following Chelsea’s transfer ban for signing Gael Kakuta from Lens. Since the announcement Man Utd have been accused by Le Harve over Paul Pogba and today Manchester City have denied any wrongdoing after Rennes reported them to Fifa for “unlawfully signing a young player”.

The problem seems to be that, it is claimed, Chelsea induced Kakuta to break his contract with Lens. Le Harve are claiming Man Utd offered financial inducements to Pogba's family and Rennes say the 17-year-old Jeremy Helan was bound to a pre-contract agreement.

Signing young players from abroad is nothing new and Arsenal fans know this better than anyone. In fact you might argue that it was Arsenal who started this trend off. Far better, and cheaper, to sign a player at 16 or 17 and develop him yourself than wait until he is a superstar and will cost millions.

However, without the player himself making the first team for the club that develops him or the club being paid, what is the incentive for them to continue with youth development? Why should Lens spend millions of pounds to develop young players if big teams will steal them?

Arsenal has courted similar controversy over the years and obviously the most high profile of these captures was Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona. While Arsenal hasn’t faced any punishment (as far as I can remember) Fran Merida was fined £2.1m back in October 2007 for infringing his contract, although this is under appeal.

The problem arises because players in the UK can sign professional contracts at 16, a year or two earlier than they can on the continent. The only way to stop this is to harmonise the rules. Clubs are desperate to get any advantage they can. So if they can sign young stars for peanuts they will do it. This also happens with teams signing players from English clubs further down the leagues, but they are usually entitled to compensation if there is a complaint.

While we are on the subject of Fabregas, he had some interesting things to say in this interview.