Youth - The Chelsea Ban!!

Hey guys

Sorry for the lack of coverage recently, I was on family duties over the weekend, didn't get watch much football, managed to record the Hibs v Celtic game and also watched the first half of Inter v Milan, hoping the catch the highlights of the other leagues this week.

Not sure if anyone saw the Celtic game, after a week of non stop talk of Eduardo's dive and simulation, Aiden McGeady got sent off for a second bookable offence, even though the linesman who was the closed offcial to the action, called for a Celtic free-kick ,the referee thought he saw better and booked Aiden and off he went, now would this have happened if nothing had happed to Eduardo, I very much doubt it, the best thing was, later in the 2nd half Chris Killen, jumped over a Hibs players leg, then went down with an awful attempt at a dive, what did the referee do....nothing, play on. Just shows there is no consistency at all, will be interesting to see if anyone gets sent off during the World Cup qualifiers this weekend.

The main reason I wanted to post something today was after the news that Chelsea will be banned for 3 transfer windows from bringing in any players, now I am sure that whatever appeal Chelsea lodge will work, and either it will be reduced, or completly disregarded, I really hope the powers in be have the strength to stand up to a rich club and make them suffer, I don't think in anyway Chelsea are the only team that conduct these methods of player buying, why not go around the teams with the best youth academies, snapping up all the talented youth and hopefully you'll produce the next Leo Messi.

Just look at Arsenal's captain Cesc Fabergas, the ex-Barca trainee was signed by Arsenal when he was 16 and by 17 he was an Arsenal regular, but for every Fabergas there is someone like Arturo Lupoli, Lupoli broke all kind of records playing for Parma's u17 team, his contract ended Arsenal snapped him up, and although he scored goals in the reserve team and a few in the Carling Cup, he never really made it to the full team, after a loan spell at Derby County, he signed for Fiorentina, he never made an appearance for the Viola, then after loan spells at Norwich, Sheffield United and Treviso he now plies his trade at former Serie A club Ascoli.

Now where would Lupoli be if he had stayed in Italy till he was 20/21 learning his trade in his native country, noone will ever know.

When I look through the squads in Englands top teams it's interesting:

Arsenal have Wojciech Szczęsny 19yr old Polish goalkeeper, Gilles Sunu 18yr old French defender, Chelsea have in their youth team players from Turkey, Austria, Slovakia, Sweden and Italy, then in the reserves the player the ban has come from 18 yr old Gael Kakuta, who spent 6 years at RC Lens youth academy, at the time Lens received nothing for the player, now where do teams like Lens go that plough millions into the youth academies to have real talented players removed from them for nominal fees, and who knows will Gael ever break into the Chelsea First team, or will he be loaned out to numerous clubs and then eventually sold to a lower level team for peanuts, where if he he stayed at Lens he could have become a first team player for a team 40 miles from where he was born and then move on and make the club millions of pounds and all the hard by the academy seem worthwhile and all the players looking up at the first team thinking "That could be us."

I think UEFA and FIFA will take action, It is not just English teams that do this, Barcelona signed up Messi when he was 13, and Real and Barca's B teams now have mostly Spanish players but the odd South American or African, so don't think I'm pointing the finger just at the English teams.

If I was in charge I would propose that players must play in the country of their birth until they reached 20, only then could they move to another country to play football, now this will never happen because every big team would go to court and complain that this prevents some kind of workers rights, or some 19 year old Brazilian wonder kid would sue FIFA for not letting him sign for Barcelona, and it would fall to pieces.

However just think about how good it would be for the game, Argentinian and Brazilian clubs would know any hot prospect would most likely stay with them, or only move within the same league until they were 20 and then you would see them move for probably more substantial fees than they do now, and also in Europe it would do wonders for each league, if Italian or Spanish stars could not make it into the squads of the big teams, they would have to move to other teams in the league be it on loan or permanently, so the so called smaller teams would improve, Countries like France and Holland could put more money into the academies knowing players wouldn't be spied on and tapped up by the money clubs, and could benefit themselves from the talent they have nurtured.

Of course as I've said this will never happen, as teams and players are greedy and want the best player/deal they can get, so I can only dream on, however I would like to hear other people thoughts on this or what they would like to see come in.