Oh, and I forgot about the schoolboy tap up case while discussing about the transfer committee in the FSG thread.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...ool-accused-falsifying-document-heart-tapped/
[article]The Liverpool tapping-up scandal was dramatically reignited on Tuesday after they were accused of submitting a “falsified” document to the Premier League when trying to lure a 12-year-old schoolboy from Stoke City.
The Anfield club are facing imminent legal action from the unnamed boy, now 13, and his family, having failed to make amends for leaving both him unable to play academy football and his parents in thousands of pounds of debt more than three months after Telegraph Sport first revealed their plight.
Compounding the litany of transgressions over which Liverpool became the first club to be punished under strict new Premier League rules - and the lengths to which they were allegedly prepared to go to conceal them - they have now been publicly accused of altering the date of a signature on his academy player registration application.
Father and son completed the document on September 2 last year, three days before the latter began the new school year at his private school, the fees for which Liverpool had agreed to pay until he was 16.
The club directed the pair not to date their signatures, an instruction the father ignored to ensure the moment was accurately recorded.
The next time the family saw the document - after it had been submitted to the Premier League - all the signatures on it were dated September 21, including the father’s, beneath which a ‘1’ had been inserted after his initial ‘2’.
The new date made it appear he and his son had signed more than two weeks after the latter had started school, rather than three days beforehand.
“If that is not falsifying a document, I don’t know what is,” the father told the Telegraph on Tuesday night.
He also confirmed he had informed the Premier League of the unauthorised date change when he originally blew the whistle on Liverpool’s near two-year campaign to tap up his son, for which they were banned in April from signing players from rival academies for at least 12 months and fined £100,000.
The father accused the Premier League of failing to act over the document and questioned why it had also shelved an investigation last month into Liverpool’s tapping up of Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk.
“If this is how it deals with such matters then the Premier League is not fit for purpose,” he added.
Liverpool refused to deny altering the date of the father’s signature on the document without his consent or dating the other signatures September 21 before submitting it to the Premier League.
They said it was standard practice for such documents to be filed within a period of days after being completed and that, because other relevant paperwork was not ready by September 2 , a decision was made to leave the boy’s registration application undated.
They also said the reason for this was explained at the time to the family, who they even claimed had consented to it, despite the father’s dating of his own signature indicating otherwise.
They categorically denied “falsifying” the document or changing the date to make it appear the club had not agreed to pay the boy’s school fees until after he had begun his new school year.The Premier League confirmed it had “considered” the date change allegation as part of its tapping-up investigation, which it said was at an end.
The family wants a court to rule on the matter as part a lawsuit over the boy’s school fees and £49,000 in compensation owed to Stoke for the four years they spent developing him, which is preventing him joining another academy.
Liverpool would have paid both had their attempts to sign the boy not collapsed thanks to a crackdown last summer on Premier League clubs paying for their scholars to be privately educated.
The scandal has left the boy’s family £15,000 in debt and him in constant threat of being thrown out of school for non-payment of his fees.
Talks have taken place aimed at averting a bitter court battle, the family’s case having been boosted by Manchester City agreeing to pay the entire school fees and training compensation of two schoolboys they were found guilty of tapping up.
The father said: “What Liverpool have done brings shame on that football club. They have ruined my son’s career and left him in despair. He has been in limbo for a year now, thanks to the £49,000 price on his head, and is being blackballed by other clubs. No-one will touch him.
“The Premier League’s handling of this case has only made matters worse.
“The richest league in the world sells its dream of football to youngsters across the globe but its rules have created a nightmare for my lad.
“The Premier League is supposed to regulate these football clubs but, to me, it feels more like a private members’ club where everyone looks after each other.
“All it and its clubs seem to care about is making sure they keep getting their tens of millions of pounds.
“The fact a 13-year-old child can no longer pursue his dream of playing football doesn’t appear to matter.
“As a responsible parent, I call on the Government to intervene before we have a generation of damaged children.”
The boy, who broke his silence on the matter in an exclusive interview with the Telegraph in May, added: “In the past 12 months, my whole world has crashed around me. Some mornings, I wake up and think it has been a bad dream.
“I miss playing football so much. It was such a massive part of my life. I used to come home from school and could not wait to go to training sessions.
“All of these people in high places need to look at what their rules do to everyday kids like me. We are promised all of these great things and then, when it suits, we are just dropped.
“I gave everything I had to football and thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
“Now I am being punished and I have no idea what for.”
A Premier League spokesman said: “We remain in dialogue with the parties involved with a view to finding a constructive outcome for the young player involved.”[/article]
[article]
Liverpool tapping-up saga Q&A | How was the case exposed?
Why have Liverpool been hit with a transfer ban on academy players?
They tapped up and offered inducements to a Stoke City schoolboy and his family in order to lure him to Anfield. Both are against rules brought in to prevent the poaching of players who clubs invest time and money in developing. They were banned from signing for at least a year players who had been registered at another academy during the previous 18 months. A further one-year ban was suspended for three years and the club were also fined £100,000.
What did Liverpool do wrong?
The Premier League found Liverpool had arranged an all-expenses-paid trip for the boy and his family to a game at Anfield and had made "other efforts" to lure him from Stoke. Those "other efforts" include alleged conduct revealed for the first time today by The Telegraph. Liverpool did eventually make a legitimate approach to sign the boy from Stoke but only after having broken the rules.
How was the case exposed?
Liverpool offered to take over the payment of the boy's private school fees from Stoke but when they tried to complete his signing, the Premier League informed them that was no longer allowed following a rule change in July prohibiting the practice by clubs unless they make the same offer to all their scholars. Liverpool then withdrew their offer, leaving the boy's parents £5,000 in debt because he had already started school. The family duly pulled out of the deal and complained to the Premier League, revealing the tapping-up in the process.
Why can the boy not join another academy?
Because of a controversial academy transfer system that ensures clubs who develop young players are compensated when they move on. In the boy's case, Stoke were entitled to £49,000: £3,000 for each of his first three years with them and £40,000 for the fourth. Liverpool would have been liable for this had he joined them. The boy cannot join another academy unless the new club are prepared to pay the compensation or Stoke waive it.
What happens next?
The boy and his family are exploring legal action against Liverpool, while Stoke are pursuing compensation from the Premier League, which is now under pressure to prevent other boys suffering the same plight. While the Premier League's new five-step process for ratifying academy transfers is welcome, it does not go far enough to safeguard the rights of vulnerable families.
So this may not be a one-off?
Suspicion is rife that there is a culture of tapping-up and inducements in the academy game. The Stoke chairman, Peter Coates, last week told The Telegraph matter-of-factly after Liverpool were punished: "Unfortunately, they are not alone. It happens and sometimes they get caught."
[/article]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...ool-accused-falsifying-document-heart-tapped/
[article]The Liverpool tapping-up scandal was dramatically reignited on Tuesday after they were accused of submitting a “falsified” document to the Premier League when trying to lure a 12-year-old schoolboy from Stoke City.
The Anfield club are facing imminent legal action from the unnamed boy, now 13, and his family, having failed to make amends for leaving both him unable to play academy football and his parents in thousands of pounds of debt more than three months after Telegraph Sport first revealed their plight.
Compounding the litany of transgressions over which Liverpool became the first club to be punished under strict new Premier League rules - and the lengths to which they were allegedly prepared to go to conceal them - they have now been publicly accused of altering the date of a signature on his academy player registration application.
Father and son completed the document on September 2 last year, three days before the latter began the new school year at his private school, the fees for which Liverpool had agreed to pay until he was 16.
The club directed the pair not to date their signatures, an instruction the father ignored to ensure the moment was accurately recorded.
The next time the family saw the document - after it had been submitted to the Premier League - all the signatures on it were dated September 21, including the father’s, beneath which a ‘1’ had been inserted after his initial ‘2’.
The new date made it appear he and his son had signed more than two weeks after the latter had started school, rather than three days beforehand.
“If that is not falsifying a document, I don’t know what is,” the father told the Telegraph on Tuesday night.
He also confirmed he had informed the Premier League of the unauthorised date change when he originally blew the whistle on Liverpool’s near two-year campaign to tap up his son, for which they were banned in April from signing players from rival academies for at least 12 months and fined £100,000.
The father accused the Premier League of failing to act over the document and questioned why it had also shelved an investigation last month into Liverpool’s tapping up of Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk.
“If this is how it deals with such matters then the Premier League is not fit for purpose,” he added.
Liverpool refused to deny altering the date of the father’s signature on the document without his consent or dating the other signatures September 21 before submitting it to the Premier League.
They said it was standard practice for such documents to be filed within a period of days after being completed and that, because other relevant paperwork was not ready by September 2 , a decision was made to leave the boy’s registration application undated.
They also said the reason for this was explained at the time to the family, who they even claimed had consented to it, despite the father’s dating of his own signature indicating otherwise.
They categorically denied “falsifying” the document or changing the date to make it appear the club had not agreed to pay the boy’s school fees until after he had begun his new school year.The Premier League confirmed it had “considered” the date change allegation as part of its tapping-up investigation, which it said was at an end.
The family wants a court to rule on the matter as part a lawsuit over the boy’s school fees and £49,000 in compensation owed to Stoke for the four years they spent developing him, which is preventing him joining another academy.
Liverpool would have paid both had their attempts to sign the boy not collapsed thanks to a crackdown last summer on Premier League clubs paying for their scholars to be privately educated.
The scandal has left the boy’s family £15,000 in debt and him in constant threat of being thrown out of school for non-payment of his fees.
Talks have taken place aimed at averting a bitter court battle, the family’s case having been boosted by Manchester City agreeing to pay the entire school fees and training compensation of two schoolboys they were found guilty of tapping up.
The father said: “What Liverpool have done brings shame on that football club. They have ruined my son’s career and left him in despair. He has been in limbo for a year now, thanks to the £49,000 price on his head, and is being blackballed by other clubs. No-one will touch him.
“The Premier League’s handling of this case has only made matters worse.
“The richest league in the world sells its dream of football to youngsters across the globe but its rules have created a nightmare for my lad.
“The Premier League is supposed to regulate these football clubs but, to me, it feels more like a private members’ club where everyone looks after each other.
“All it and its clubs seem to care about is making sure they keep getting their tens of millions of pounds.
“The fact a 13-year-old child can no longer pursue his dream of playing football doesn’t appear to matter.
“As a responsible parent, I call on the Government to intervene before we have a generation of damaged children.”
The boy, who broke his silence on the matter in an exclusive interview with the Telegraph in May, added: “In the past 12 months, my whole world has crashed around me. Some mornings, I wake up and think it has been a bad dream.
“I miss playing football so much. It was such a massive part of my life. I used to come home from school and could not wait to go to training sessions.
“All of these people in high places need to look at what their rules do to everyday kids like me. We are promised all of these great things and then, when it suits, we are just dropped.
“I gave everything I had to football and thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
“Now I am being punished and I have no idea what for.”
A Premier League spokesman said: “We remain in dialogue with the parties involved with a view to finding a constructive outcome for the young player involved.”[/article]
[article]
Liverpool tapping-up saga Q&A | How was the case exposed?
Why have Liverpool been hit with a transfer ban on academy players?
They tapped up and offered inducements to a Stoke City schoolboy and his family in order to lure him to Anfield. Both are against rules brought in to prevent the poaching of players who clubs invest time and money in developing. They were banned from signing for at least a year players who had been registered at another academy during the previous 18 months. A further one-year ban was suspended for three years and the club were also fined £100,000.
What did Liverpool do wrong?
The Premier League found Liverpool had arranged an all-expenses-paid trip for the boy and his family to a game at Anfield and had made "other efforts" to lure him from Stoke. Those "other efforts" include alleged conduct revealed for the first time today by The Telegraph. Liverpool did eventually make a legitimate approach to sign the boy from Stoke but only after having broken the rules.
How was the case exposed?
Liverpool offered to take over the payment of the boy's private school fees from Stoke but when they tried to complete his signing, the Premier League informed them that was no longer allowed following a rule change in July prohibiting the practice by clubs unless they make the same offer to all their scholars. Liverpool then withdrew their offer, leaving the boy's parents £5,000 in debt because he had already started school. The family duly pulled out of the deal and complained to the Premier League, revealing the tapping-up in the process.
Why can the boy not join another academy?
Because of a controversial academy transfer system that ensures clubs who develop young players are compensated when they move on. In the boy's case, Stoke were entitled to £49,000: £3,000 for each of his first three years with them and £40,000 for the fourth. Liverpool would have been liable for this had he joined them. The boy cannot join another academy unless the new club are prepared to pay the compensation or Stoke waive it.
What happens next?
The boy and his family are exploring legal action against Liverpool, while Stoke are pursuing compensation from the Premier League, which is now under pressure to prevent other boys suffering the same plight. While the Premier League's new five-step process for ratifying academy transfers is welcome, it does not go far enough to safeguard the rights of vulnerable families.
So this may not be a one-off?
Suspicion is rife that there is a culture of tapping-up and inducements in the academy game. The Stoke chairman, Peter Coates, last week told The Telegraph matter-of-factly after Liverpool were punished: "Unfortunately, they are not alone. It happens and sometimes they get caught."
[/article]
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