A Soccerlens reader (thanks WP) mailed me a link to this article on Kia Joorabchian and Carlos Tevez and pointed something out which I thought would be interesting to talk about, despite the fact that it’s almost a month old now.
It’s interesting because I think Kia’s right – that the MSI – West Ham agreement over Tevez and Mascherano is quite similar to club – to – club loan agreements, and as a result, there is no case to be made for West Ham violating rule U18.
Basically, what caught me eye here was this passage:
It is a little bit like a loan deal between two clubs, except it is a loan deal between the club and a third party.
You buy the player outright, you invest in the player and the clubs sign him from you; they take the registration, the rights on any resale belong to you.
It does not give you any right to influence when he can play or where he should play. Unlike some of the loan deals in England, where, for instance, Ben Foster or Tim Howard cannot play against Manchester United.
Update:WP asked about this phrase in particular: “the rights on any resale belong to you” – and I think that means that only the owning party – MSI or other third parties involved – own the player and the decision to sell / transfer the player rest with the third party and the revenues from that sale go completely to the third party as well.
The loan bit made me think again about what I had written earlier about the Tevez ruling – where I had said that West Ham had broken both rules B13 and U18.
In retrospect, the conditions of a loan agreement between MSI and West Ham over Tevez seem very similar to the loan agreements signed between two clubs over a particular player.
The more I look at it, the more it seems that technically, the players ARE on loan to the clubs under the same circumstances as those of club-to-club loans – that is, the original club owns the transfer rights, could recall the player and trigger a transfer, etc.
What do you guys think?
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