The real immorality rests utterly within bankrupt Barcelona « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By Tony Attwood
The Barcelona president, Sandro Rosell, has called Arsenal’s signing of a 16-year-old Jon Miquel Toral Harper “immoral”. The player was 16 on 5 February, has there’s been talk of him being the “new Cesc Fábregas”. He’s just about the same age as Cesc was when he stepped up his career in the same way.
But there’s more to the story than might be first thought. First, there’s a connection with England for the player – his mother is English, he’s reported to have said he would like to play in England, and he actually asked to leave the club when he was 15.
The dominant fact however is the lack of harmony about employment laws in Europe. I am certainly not an expert on Spanish law but as I understand it a Spanish company can’t offer and person under 16 an employment contract, while a UK company can. On the other hand, Arsenal are highly restricted as to who they can pull into their academy (the restriction being a geographic one).
Barca get around the problem by offering contracts to non-Spanish citizens often as young as 7 (Kais from Lyon) 8 year old Antman (from Lyon) and 9 year old Patina from Canada. Or come to that Lionel Messi a few years back.
It is also true that Barca went fishing for Benik Afobe and Chuks Aneke last season when they were 17.
In another twist the Spanish media have said that the deal was brokered by an agent who is the brother of the Pep Guardiola – but Young Guns Blog (a mine of information on all this) says otherwise. I go with the blog on this occasion, on the grounds that they have always been right in the past.
But when asked about signing Cesc again the comment from President Rossell was, “Barça must have the best possible team and we have to fulfil the requests from the technical staff without forgetting the economic situation and that Barça has to pay salaries and costs. If Cesc comes, because the technical staff want him and he wants to, the club members would accept it.”That’s a good bit of double talk when you remember that last June Barca were in such a financial fix that they were unable to pay their own players. So bad was the situation that not one single bank was willing to make the loan to allow the salaries to be played. Since then the club has announced that its sacred shirt front that never took paid adverts is taking paid adverts. It is unlikely to be enough.
In terms of cost, it looks like about £300,000. In terms of the young lads name, Torel is the dad’s name and Harper the mum’s name – the other bits are his forenames, as far as I know. And he plays in the Cesc position – hence the excitement. He is also one of those rare players who is genuinely two footed. I guess the first question is whether he starts breaking records like Cesc did.
The path to Arsenal from the bankruptcy of Barca is getting well worn, and now includes Cesc Fabregas, Fran Merida (now with Athletico Madrid) and Ignasi Miquel (who played against Orient).
But looking at that list reminds me of another point that has arisen in the past. In October 2007, Mérida was ordered by the courts in Spain to pay a fee around €3.2m to Bankrupt Barce for his “failing to meet the terms of a personal pre-contract” with Barcelona.
At the time this was said in some quarters to have serious implications for clubs in England, where, as noted above, players can sign pro contracts earlier than in Spain. A Madrid-based lawyer, Rodrigo García, was quoted as saying, “English teams will now think again before signing a young Spanish player.” Presumably they have thought again, and found the way out of that particular problem.
Highly recommended: Young Guns Blog
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