The English Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspur has signed Crystal Palace prodigy John Bostock, aged 16, for $1.5 million, with a further $1.1 million to be paid depending on the number of times he plays for his new team. The price was the ruling of a Football League tribunal, and it has left Palace infuriated at what it sees as the poaching of a young talent it’s been nurturing for the past few years.
Lawrence Donegan compares Bostock’s transfer with the move of Cardiff City’s Aaron Ramsey, 18, to Arsenal, for a fair market rate of $10 million. The league tribunal only rules on transfer for players under 17, “which invariably leaves the selling clubs open-mouthed at its unfairness.”
Donegan says that it would be much more palatable to introduce “a new framework giving clubs like Palace not just an initial transfer fee for a player, but also a decent share of any future transfer fee should he subsequently change clubs.” This would give smaller clubs the prospect of a “decent return for their efforts in finding and developing good young players. Even better, it would make bigger clubs think more carefully about the financial consequences of hoovering up young players.”