Chelsea Child Poachers

The headlines say it all. ‘Beware Child Poachers’, screams the Daily Mail. The day before the same paper was content with the single word, ‘Thieves!’. An excellent piece by Des Kelly with the heading, ‘English Prints All Over Stolen Goods.’ The Sun ran with the same single word headline as The Mail and then followed it up with, ‘Justice At Last – You’ve had this coming to you Chelsea.’ The Times kept up the pressure with the headline, ‘Big Game Poachers Prey on Youth’, while The Observer ran with two stories entitled, ‘Cash Cow Turns Rustlers’ and an in-depth article about the Chelsea Youth team under the banner; ‘The Tainted Team’.

The Guardian offered a thoughtful piece about the state of the English football academies under the title; ‘Child auctions expose incompetence of English games academy system’, and in the same paper an ominous story for the Blues, ‘Chelsea facing legal (another) threat over boy of 11’. What is certain is that with the exception of the Chelsea website, you will not find a single article or editorial in the slightest bit sympathetic to Chelsea or any of the other big Premier League clubs on the question of their youth recruitment policies.

Let’s look a little closer at what the British press, better known for its little Englander, chauvinistic attitudes, has to say on the matter. Pride of place goes to Des Kelly of the Daily Mail 5/09/09. Des pulls no punches.

“So the Child catchers have been caught for once. About time too. Only this is not some fictional villain’.These are real life characters who scour the world looking to snare young footballers in their nets. Des continues, ‘As far as football is concerned, they (Chelsea) are the bullies. They push, cajole, intimidate, tempt, threaten, charm and then pay through the nose when none of that works to get whatever they want.”

Kelly then paints the bigger picture.

“Of course they are not alone in using such ruthless tactics. But continental Europe has long regarded Britain’s powerful Premier League as predators at best and shameless parasites at worst.”

Pointing out that Chelsea is by no means alone in this international plunder. Kelly explains…

“There does not appear to be a loophole Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal will shy away from exploiting. There isn’t a club they will dare not offend if there is the slightest chance that the next Ronaldo, Zidane or Maradona can be smuggled away for next to nothing.”

Kelly then goes on to provide some illuminating details of just how ruthless Chelsea and the other big English clubs have become. Kelly concludes…

“This is about tackling the sporting equivalent of stealing chicks from the nest. Yes, football is a ruthless industry, but that does not mean ethics have to be entirely written out of the business plan.”

And there is the rub. Can it be possible to have an ethical approach to corporate sport any more than it has proved possible to have an ethical dimension to global banking? Another very useful contribution in the same edition came from The Mail’s Chief Football Correspondent, Matt Lawton who was able to tap into the thoughts of one Chairman Bates, the very same Chairman Bates who sold Chelsea Football Club to Mr Abramovich some five years ago. Bates has much to say on the matter at hand.

“The problem here is that the big clubs are stripping the small clubs of their youngsters. They are like Japanese fishing trawlers, just sweeping up everything in their nets. But the big clubs treat the little clubs like **** They try to pay as little as possible. Manchester City spent more than £200m in the last transfer window but when they took two of our 14 year-olds not so long ago they offered £30,000 for one and £40,000 for the other. Never mind how much we had already invested in them. Never mind the fact that running an academy is a bit like running a stud farm. You might get one thoroughbred in 10 but you still have to feed the other nine.”

Dear old Ken Bates, how we miss him in the daily sporting headlines. Unstoppable, our Ken continues…

“I know of a number of academies in this country that are actually running at a loss and it is not helped by the fact that the big clubs are taking their best kids from them for peanuts.”

But his most telling point is to come.

“The problem is that young players and their parents are sometimes seduced by short term promises. It must be very tempting to see short term gains and glamour of moving to a so called ‘big club’. In reality, the truth is very different. The kids disappear into the anonymity of the nether regions rarely to be heard of again. Right now some of these boys are just being traded like horsemeat.”

Interesting how someone once thought of as scheming and unscrupulous, is now seen as a wise old man of football offering lectures on the morality of football and life in general. That’s progress for you.

In one respect this is a great story; greed subterfuge and international skulduggery. But in another respect it’s the same old story. Money corrupts, big money corrupts big time. And let’s face it, when you are dealing with the likes of Abramovich you are dealing with big money with a capital B. Of course the manner in which the Russian oligarchs gained their money in the first place should have given everyone a clear enough picture of how they would put that money to use. If the footballing authorities here and internationally had any integrity, they would have put a stop to the foreign takeovers with their suspect money a decade ago.

It’s a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has well and truly bolted. But I am being naive myself. In an age of neoliberal finance capitalism what hope would a mere football association have in halting the international flow of capital, services and people? Rule number one of capitalism: capital always moves to the highest point of return. Russian gangster capitalism certainly wasn’t about to become squeamish and moralistic over a few young football players when it had patently ridden rough-shot over every conceivable type of morality in the process of amassing their fortunes. As for the East European oligarchs, so it is for the billionaires of the Middle East and the more established entrepreneurs of the United States. None have the interests of local communities and local sports development at heart. If they did they would be investing their surplus fortunes much closer to home.

In an excellent expose of the colonial plunder of Africa’s young talent by EPL clubs and their’ corporate masters, Matt Lawton and Dennis Rice of the Daily Mail (8/9/09) have produced a piece of journalism worthy of a national journalistic award. Appropriately entitled, ‘The Rape of Africa’, the piece exposes how an unofficial football academy has been set up by British businessmen with the aim of profiting from the development and sale of talented young African players to European clubs.

Hiding under the altruistic banner of youth development and ‘giving something back to the sport’, the academy, a Jersey registered company, is clearly set up as a commercial venture. Lawton and Rice explain…

“Despite all the talk of giving something back, a website set up to attract further funding for the academy leaves little doubt as to the commercial nature of the enterprise. Not least in a special section entitled ‘The Transfer Market’, it writes of, ‘an excellent package of services to capitalise on this opportunity’. The deal is simple. Premier players including the likes of Ian Wright, invest money into the academy, singling out particular youngsters for development and if and when they are sold on to European clubs, the investors claim 40% of the transfer fees and a further 10% should the player sold on again.”

So much for altruism!’The South African footballing authorities have been scathing about this type of get rich quick activity. Raymond Hack, the Chief executive of the South African Football Association, had this to say of the British run academy.

“You can’t go into a country, rape the country and then run away. I have never heard of them and they have certainly not been endorsed by the SAFA. They are just picking up the best players and are going to sell them like merchandise to the highest bidder. It is like the old days of British colonialism. What good is it doing for the townships of South Africa? They are taking the best players out and putting nothing back.”

The whole child poaching story is predictable enough in this age of global corporate greed, but what is truly remarkable is the way that The Daily Mail has run with the story.’ With headlines screaming, ‘Like old days of colonialism’ one has to remind oneself that we are not reading The Morning Star. As the money and corruption flowing into sport grows by the day, so it seems that sports journalism has the power to go places that mainstream journalism fears to tread. I take my hat off to Mr Lawton and Mr Rice on a job well done.

So where is it all going to end? Chelsea has their transfer ban but predictably they are going to appeal. And we now learn that fifteen new transfers involving top English clubs are under investigation by FIFA and we know Man U are the subject of official complaint in this respect. Hugh McIlvanney in The Times (6/9/09) takes an interesting angle on where we really are. Mr Voice of Sport argues…

“But nobody should imagine that the present furore is all about morality, least of all that the ‘intensity generated by those running Lens is overwhelmingly concerned with safeguarding the welfare of young sportsmen. If Chelsea had acceded to Lens’ request for 5million Euros as compensation for the poaching of Kakuta, the player would still be a stranger to sports page headlines.”

If McIlvanney is right in this assessment what we really have is a demand by the smaller clubs both in Europe, Africa and around the world, for a bigger slice of the cake. The actual welfare of the youngsters in question doesn’t really come into it. Similarly, Ken Bates was talking morality but what he really wanted perhaps is a six figure cheque for his youngsters as opposed to the paltry few thousand that he received from City.

Luminaries such as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, chairman of Bayern Munich may like to argue the case about the ‘child trafficking’ in football, but when the dust is settled on this one it may prove to be all about a fairer distribution of the billions being poured into the game by the likes of Roman Abromovich et al. Money always talks.

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