Yet Another Barca Farce-a
(David Ramos/SB Nation)
Hey guess what? We’ve been treated to another example of football’s governing body doing something dumb. Barcelona’s transfer embargo has been upheld following an unsuccessful appeal and they’ll be banned from making any new signings during the next two transfer windows. Except that during the length of their appeal Barcelona went and spent £130m on new players, effectively stocking the shelves for the winter. Hmm.
The first thing I ever wrote on this website was a big rant about Barcelona FC and their faux-evangelical opinions of themselves. This case is more fuel to the fire. What’s actually happened is Barca have been reprimanded for illegally recruiting young players to their academy. FIFA’s regulations – under article 19 - say that you cannot recruit international players aged 18 or younger unless:
A) Their parents have moved to your country also and for non-football related reasons.
B) Some convoluted thing about being between 16-18, moving between EU nations and ensuring the kid has a proper continuation of their education.
C) The player lives within 50km of a national border and remains living there, making the commute between the countries for training every day.
It’s all typical FIFA in its red tape and cavernous room for corruption, which is why it’s actually quite a shock that the ban’s been upheld and Barcelona charged with 10 counts of illegal youth recruitment. Unfortunately it’s turned into near-complete a cop out, but at least there’s a precedent now set so that when some midtable English team does this they can suffer the full and brutal consequences. If Barcelona hadn’t just signed 7 new players they’d be looking at a dangerously thin squad. Instead we’re once again reading stories of how Andres Iniesta reckons Los Catalans can win every honour available this season. It’s all so very, very dumb.
But of course this is Barcelona Football Club, who exist beyond the normal boundaries of a sporting organisation. No, these folk are ambassadors for the splendour and precision of the beautiful game. Nothing they do could ever be wrong! So just as they did with Luis Suarez’s current ban, Barcelona are taking this one to the Court of Arbitration in Sport. Thankfully they threw that particular appeal out the window and Suarez’s stint on the sideline has been enforced, even if he’s allowed to train with the team now (which let’s be fair, was taking things a bit far banning him from ‘all football activities’ – what if his son wanted to play kicks in the backyard, would the neighbours have to call the cops?). Apparently he can play in practice games too but who really cares.
This transfer ban could be a bit more wide-ranging than the Suarez one, however. If the CAS rule in favour of Barca, then we’ve seen a monumental legal precedent. FIFA will effectively have to change their rulebook to fit the Barcelona one (and normally it’s FIFA laying down the legal exaction). I mean, if it’s fair for one club then it’s fair for any club. They’ll all start recruiting youngsters from every nook and cranny of the globe and getting their bans annulled by the Sports Courts. It’ll be similar to the way the Bosman ruling changed the face of free transfers in football, only that one was for the good of the players and the sport. This will not be.
You see, what Barcelona are arguing is that their recruitment policies are better than FIFA’s. They can offer more to developing players and help them to achieve greater than they ever could otherwise. And they’re right. The Barcelona youth system is probably the best on the planet and few can even lay a finger on them in competition. That’s the whole problem though. Changing the global system to suit the single team at the summit is gonna screw everyone else up. It’s setting expectations that only the best teams can match. You’ll see young players exploited for money and fame; Extortion; People trafficking. A whole rotten can of worms.
Here’s an excerpt from their appeal:
"FC Barcelona may not in any way share a resolution that is an affront to the spirit of our Masia*, a world renowned example of academic, human and sporting education."
*Masia – a rural Spanish villa/farmhouse common in the area and a nickname for their football academy.
Translation: We refuse to accept that you could possibly deny our greatness and are in fact wildly offended by the very notion that such a contrary view is even possible.
Those 10 kids who were the subjects of the breach (apparently there was a Kiwi and an Aussie in the bunch!) will become better footballers and have more successful careers than otherwise possible because of Barcelona’s neglect for the rules that everyone else plays by. That’s not the point. The point is that it was illegal and yet the club has put the stroking of their own engorged ego ahead of the rest of the world. I suppose it’s pretty hard to see the plight of the peasants when your castle sits so high in the clouds. Let the dirty plebs eat cake, after all.
For all of these reasons - and for the fact that somewhere in the capitalist coliseum that is modern sports I still believe that some rare and glimmering shards of morality exist beyond our everyday perceptions - I don’t think that the CAS is going to let Barcelona off lightly. Not like FIFA did. The right to appeal obviously has to exist but there’s something wrong when that appeal is denied and yet the club still turns up for the first game of the season with Ivan Rakitic, Jeremy Mathieu, Thomas Vermaelen, Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Claudio Bravo and Alen Halilovic all freshly in the fold, with Luis Suarez suited up in the stands, and with another week left to add a few more names to that pack. Most clubs would be crippled by this punishment regardless of the delay, but not Barcelona who have enough in the rainy day fund to get three transfer windows worth of Christmas shopping done at once.
It’s every bit as farcical as the ASADA situation in the NRL. A massive scandal, followed by a reportedly devastating fall of the gavel… only for the sentence to be just as easily avoided as Lionel Messi gliding past the clumdsy lunges of Primera Liga defenders.
Nice one FIFA. The blokes with the money win out over the rights of the labourers once more. But at least this time it’ll look like you tried, right?