Arsenal has been warned and fined £34,000 by FIFA for failing to make full disclosure on the sell-on clauses inserted in two of their former players.
The governing body warned that if the Gunners breached any rules again, it might result in even more severe punishments in the future.
The Gunners added variable sell-on clauses in the deals that saw them sell Chuba Akpom to PAOK and Joel Campbell to Frosinone.
The agreement between both teams states that if any of the buying sides sold the players back to an English team, the Gunners would be entitled to a higher percentage of their selling price than if the players leave them for teams outside of England.
Sun Sports reveals that: “In the case of striker Akpom, 24, Arsenal would receive 40 per cent of the transfer fee if he moved to a British club, but only 30 per cent if he went elsewhere.
“Frosinone would have to pay Arsenal 30 per cent of any fee if Campbell was sold back to the UK, but only 25 per cent if he went anywhere else.”
FIFA began probing those transfers earlier this year, and the Gunners were found guilty of entering into contracts that enable them to influence other clubs.
They were also found to have not reported data to the FIFA Transfer Matching System.
We were given permission by the relevant authorities in this country to include these clauses. FIFA have taken exception and can kind of understand there point but it was never explicit. Seems like a nonsense charge to me.
I wonder how does Liverpools Barca are not allowed to come after their players without a surcharge clause work in this (inserted in the Coutinho deal.) As it has a similar effect to this charge in ensuring Barca pursue non-liverpool targets. It ignores the clubs involved agency in agreeing the deal originally ie they want the player now and are happy to accept the clauses for the future. If you go down the rabbit hole appearance fees should be viewed as controlling individual players futures etc. so it’s a legal can of worms if upheld which I doubt.