Young Spanish Players

[jimmylibel]

From yesterday's Guardian Fiver

 

The Fiver is no stranger to relying on work-experience kids to do all the leg-work. If it wasn't for the phalanx of impressionable tykes streaming through our doors - desperate to learn such concepts as "tardiness" and "staring at the cricket trying to think of another one" at the feet of the undisputed experts of the trade - our teatime email would doubtless appear as often as Halley's Comet. So it is with surprise and no little concern that we learn that Barcelona president Joan Laporta has condemned the use of young players, or more particularly the use of young Spanish players, by English football clubs.

 

"We have a big problem with English clubs who are targeting our youngsters," blustered the usually suave Catalan. "Before they used to do it with French clubs and now it seems as though we are next," he continued, face visibly reddening as he thought of one-time Barcelona whelp Cesc Fabregas, who'd still be festering in the youth team if he hadn't moved to Arsenal. Apart from Fabregas, Barca also lost Gerard Pique to the MU Rowdies and will soon bid adios to midfielder Fran Merida, also Arsenal-bound.

 

To make matters worse, Merida could leave for free after an oversight left his youth contract with only one club signature instead of the required three. "We are a club that has invested seven million euros in our youth team this season," Laporta flapped. "The British clubs offer astronomical figures to kids who are 14, 15 and 16 - a figure that for ethical reasons we cannot equal." Ah, ethical reasons. This clearly wouldn't be the same Joan Laporta who tried to cover up his brother-in-law's Francoist leanings, then an embarrassment that's the Catalonian equivalent of members of the British royal family supported the naz ... what's that? Eh? Oh.

 

 

 

Obviously the article is making out that it's about Arsenal after Fran Merida but isn't there also talk of us signing their Spanish/ Serbian forward?