It was good to have a leading article in Saturday’s Times join a long and hitherto lonely campaign for the abolition of those silly, unnecessary and unworkable rules against “tapping up”. A footballer is as entitled as anyone else to entertain offers of alternative employment while under contract, and without his present employers’ knowledge; what business is it of theirs until he chooses to tell them?
So many dubious things go on in football that it seems grotesque that Ashley Cole, for example, should be hauled before the authorities for sitting down with Jos? Mourinho, the manager of Chelsea at the time, and others for a chat about moving from Arsenal when his contract runs out. Time is still wasted on policing and punishing such perfectly reasonable behaviour. It may or may not have been wasted in Fifa’s action against Chelsea over Ga?l Kakuta; until we are told precisely how Chelsea lured him from Lens, we can only guess.
But, with youngsters involved, Fifa and Uefa are right to want the market to be strictly controlled. Their anxiety to regulate is overdue recognition of how far football’s philosophy has been tilted from sport to business, to the detriment of both. The main point of football’s existence is not — never was and never will be — to enrich people. It is to self-perpetuate, to plough its revenue into coaching networks, community projects and other forms of regeneration.
Although this is cost-effective and anti-inflationary as well as admirable, the tendency has been to let a steeply increasing money supply, for which television and the super-rich are largely responsible, feed an inflationary spiral in wages, transfer fees and agents’ commissions.
The fools who let this happen have belatedly come to their senses, which is why representatives of leagues and clubs as well as national federations across Europe are behind the campaign of Michel Platini, the Uefa president, for “financial fair play” (it is a misunderstanding that they are bewitched by a zealot).
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An insistence that clubs spend only what they earn should reduce inflation and indebtedness; no wonder even Roman Abramovich, who has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on Chelsea, is said to support it. But the determination of Platini and Sepp Blatter, his Fifa counterpart, to address the interests of young players and the clubs who nurture their abilities should help rich and poor.
A free marketeer would no doubt sweep away all age restrictions on recruitment; parents are paid, after all, if their babies are used as models. But that ignores the crowded nature of football as a profession. It sucks boys in and spits most out. They come from all over the world to the academies and only a small proportion will make a lot from football. Some rejects will have only themselves to blame. But at least they will have learnt something other than football before leaving their homelands at 16. There is nothing wrong with Chelsea, if they think they can offer a Kakuta a better life in London than Lens could, from making their case. The trouble arises when the fight becomes dirty and here Fifa and Uefa have been negligent: they have permitted an environment in which transgressions are almost inevitable.
If they had been doing their jobs properly, we would already have a system guaranteeing the club at which a player spends his formative years compensatory income throughout his career, even after he is transferred on. The best way to do this is through a levy based on salary — ignoring transfer fees and reversing some of the ill effects on youth development of the Bosman ruling, which has affected some of the best educator clubs, such as Ajax — and payable each season in order to take account of bonuses.
If, as we are led to believe, Chelsea swayed Kakuta with nearly £900,000 plus £300,000 a year, an additional, say, 20 per cent could have been paid to Lens, giving them £180,000 and, on the assumption that his value is to rise by 10 per cent a year over a decade, a further £960,000 by the end of that time. They would, of course, have the option of letting Chelsea buy that contract out.
The scheme would have to be monitored by leagues and national associations and, ultimately, Fifa. But it would make football more constructively profitable. It would make the coach more important than the scout or the agent. For the good of the game — to borrow Fifa’s slogan — it must be done.
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? Say what you like about “Dr” Sulaiman al-Fahim, it would not be only Paul Hart who felt reassured by the weekend headline from Fratton Park. “Portsmouth’s new owner has faith in status quo”, it proclaimed. I always suspected al-Fahim would make a refreshingly communicative chairman, but who would have believed he had such sound taste in rock bands?
Game needs mind-reader, not a referee
Just a day after John Terry summoned the combination of myopia and brass neck required to state that only foreign footballers cheat, Wayne Rooney conned a referee into awarding England a penalty. He did not dive but cynically became entangled with a Slovenia defender before keeling over.
At least that is one interpretation. Another, more charitable to the referee, is that Jonas Eriksson saw Bostjan Cesar holding Rooney’s shirt before the Manchester United forward held his and punished the original offence. These issues are complicated and show why anti-diving campaigns and trial by television are hazardous; you have to attempt the impossible by exploring players’ minds rather than, as in most cases of refereeing since intent was all but erased from the laws, their physical behaviour.
We shall not, therefore, dwell overlong on that penalty. The silence Rooney maintained afterwards will be observed. But let’s acknowledge this: if a Brazilian had done that, or even a Brazil-born Croatia striker, we’d be talking about it for years.
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Silva service a reminder Arsenal are missing a trick in midfield
Giuseppe Meazza, after whom the stadium generally known as the San Siro is named, and Giovanni Ferrari were the first to do it. They appeared for the winning side in two World Cup finals (for Italy in 1934 and 1938). Since then, if my research is reliable, only nine men have equalled the feat, all Brazilians: Gilmar, Nilton and Djalma Santos, Zito, Didi, Vava, M?rio Zagalo and Garrincha (1958 and 1962), Pel? (1958 and 1970) and Cafu (1994 and 2002).
Hope can be harboured by Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Gianluca Zambrotta, Andrea Pirlo, Daniele De Rossi and a few others who took part in the win over France in 2006, if, as looks likely, Italy reach South Africa. Thierry Henry, sad to say, cannot join the list even if France qualify; he was an unused substitute against Brazil in 1998. But an old Arsenal colleague could conceivably join the roll of honour, for Gilberto Silva, a veteran of Brazil’s 2002 campaign, is still going strong in a team who will inevitably be ranked among the favourites.
Seven years ago, he was the rock of Luiz Felipe Scolari’s midfield, the solid foundation on which Rivaldo and Ronaldinho could create. Now Gilberto offers Kak? the same reassurance. He will be 33 next month and, as he enters his second season with Panathinaikos, the view that Arsenal have not replaced him lingers.
For them he was the craftiest of holding midfield players, albeit a master of the dark art of tactical fouling in that, unlike Patrick Vieira, he seldom incurred a card. Losing Gilberto and Mathieu Flamini, his intended replacement, was a setback from which Arsenal have still to recover. Alexandre Song, though improving, is not in the same class yet.