Manchester United are about to be dragged into a transfer battle with Le Harve and UEFA about the recent capture of French U-16 captain Paul Progba.
Progba, who is dubbed as next Claude Makélélé, joined United from Le Harve in August. Le Harve has become displeased, because they did not receive any compensation for the player that grew and developed through their youth system the last five years.
Sir Alex Ferguson and his scouts have always had their eye on young talent in Europe and throughout the world. They have pulled out no stops to get the young players to bring them to United to develop them into hopefully world-class players.
But the United scouts, who are guided by lawyers, know the UEFA parameters about signing of young players, and know that there are many loop holes to get those players. As long as they did not break any of those rules, there should no problem with the capture of any young talent.
Trouble
Chelsea has recently been banned from participating in the next two transfer markets, because they have been found guilty of serious infractions and wrong doing in the signing of Gael Kakuta from Lens in 2007.
Le Harve had winger Charles N'Zogbia snapped up by Newcastle in similar fashion in 2004. After three years of appeals, Newcastle and N'Zogbia were both ordered to pay a total of £640,000 to the French club.
Le Harve is claiming that this is the same type of infraction as both of the previously mentioned.
Familiar
Over the past few seasons, United have captured some young players from clubs, but they were all within sanctions and guidelines set forth by UEFA and/or FIFA. A couple of clubs that have not been happy with United were Barcelona and Lazio with the captures of Gerard Pique and Federico Macheda, respectively.
Pique was plucked from the highly-regarded Barcelona youth system before he signed any contracts with the senior team. There are rules set forth by the Gibraltar Football Association (GFA), the Spanish football governing body that prevents teams in Spain to sign players to senior team contracts before a certain age, so United acted quickly and sign the young defender.
In the summer of 2008, Sir Alex saw Pique as a surplus and sold him back to Barcelona for an undisclosed fee. The tall, strong Spanish defender infamously led Barcelona's back line and kept United's forwards quiet during the 2008/09 Champions League final, which the Catalans won 2-0.
The Macheda transfer is a different story because they paid £500,000 for his services to Lazio. Lazio only recently came out and stated their displeasure because of his involvement in the United first team.
Macheda burst onto the scene at the tail end of last season with two impressive match winners against Aston Villa and Sunderland, which propelled United to the English Premier League title.
Of course smaller clubs are reluctant to lose their top talents to bigger clubs, but as long as that club acts within the guidelines provided by FIFA or UEFA, there should not be any backlash from them to try to ruin that certain club's reputation.
