Protection:

Treating young players and their parents is very important to Neal Ardley and his staff at Cardiff City’s Academy, but there are other things that can be done to protect the club’s interests besides treating them right. “Contractually, there are various things you can do when they reach twelve years old,” said Ardley. “You put them on a YD4 that ties them up for four years until they are sixteen. I think once they are past their fourteenth birthday, you can offer them an apprenticeship, which is from when they leave school – from sixteen to eighteen. Once they’ve got that, you can either offer a professional contract which kicks in on their seventeenth birthday, so there are various ways of tying up the future star, but I still think to get them to commit to you, you’ve got to be doing things right.”

But there is only so much that can be done. Smaller clubs will always be at the mercy of bigger clubs with wallets to match. Crystal Palace – recently put into administration – developed a talented young player, Johnny Bostock, only to lose him to Tottenham Hotspurs as soon as he was able to sign a contract. Palace could do little about it, but complain and hope that the tribunal judged in their favour. They were compensated, but the amount was disappointing for smaller clubs in terms of his potential worth.

“I think that is a little bit disappointing,” said Ardley. “A big club has come in. You’ve got a player there potentially could be worth three or four million pounds in the future, but through whatever loophole they’ve gone through, they’ve got him for a significantly lower amount than that. From my point of view there does need to be a little bit of protection with players, so that’s something that needs to be done. The first case maybe sets the tone for the rest of the people, so Palace lost out because they were the first. I think that’s something that needs to be looked into, but what we have got to protect against is the bigger clubs muscle.”

So how can that be done? “That really is for the authorities – the Premier League, the Football League and the FA,” said Ardley. “You’ve got three governing bodies now and what there needs to be – I think they’re doing it – is a panel of maybe two people from each association and they all get there because they will be representing the different clubs. It’s got to be fair. I think what they’ve got to do is make sure that smaller clubs that get talent, develop it and bring it through can’t just lose them at the drop of a hat because a bigger club has got their wallet out.”

Problems and Loopholes:

Small clubs develop talent and give them an opportunity earlier than the big clubs, but they will always be vulnerable to the lure of a big club with the wallet to match. Could contracts help and would they be legally binding on a boy yet to turn eighteen? “You are never going to fully protect yourself,” says Ardley. “We could have a star at thirteen years of age. We recognise that he’s a bit of a star. We offer him this YD4 I talked about which ties him up on a four year deal until he’s sixteen. When he’s thirteen another club decides they want him and offer his parents the world etc. etc. They decide that they are going to go with that. There’s nothing we can do other than claim compensation and it will go to a tribunal where we will say, ‘Look he was our next best thing; we had high hopes for him etc. etc.’ The opposition would say, ‘Well we want him, blah, blah, blah,’ and then you would just be in the lap of the gods really. Hopefully the tribunal would come and see our side and make sure that you are compensated.”

FIFA recognised that there was an unsavoury trade in young players leaving their country in search of untold riches – dreams that often turned into nightmares. Article 13 forbade players to leave their country before they turned eighteen unless their family also moved. The intent was good, but has it become a loophole that can be exploited by the bigger clubs? Ardley thinks so. Arsenal managed to lure a then promising teenager Cesc Fàbregas from Barcelona’s academy for a fraction of his eventual worth. They later repeated the trick with Fran Merida by bringing both the prospect and his family to London. It is not an option open to the likes of Cardiff City.

Ardley believes that despite the good intent, Article 13 has become a loophole for bigger clubs to plunder the academies of smaller clubs. “I think it is for the bigger clubs,” he said. “If I’m honest I think you’ll go around the budgets here in Cardiff wouldn’t allow with our running costs for me to be able to do that with compensation and moving house etc. etc. I think you look at your Manchester Uniteds, Manchester City, your Liverpools. There are loads of clubs that will do that if they think that they’ve got a star. I think Manchester United did it with Johnny Evans from Northern Ireland. They moved him and his family over at a young age and I think that if they have got a star, for a club that has got a turnover like those big clubs, it’s no big deal really to take a chance and move a family over and give a job to someone.”