French Go Claim Crazy

Few of us would turn down the chance to make some easy money and French football clubs are no exception. After FIFA decided that Chelsea acted wrongly in their aquisition of Kakuta, it seems everyone wants a piece of the pie.

Although it's hard to hear yourself think above the din made by fans of other clubs (and their chairmen) as a wave of new found morality sweeps the football world, let's take a moment to study the facts.

Jérémy Hélan is a young Frenchman recruited to City's academy in February this year. He had just graduated from the Clairefontaine academy, which is a French version of Lilleshall, a kind of super academy designed to nuture young French talent. Hélan was basically a free agent as he wasn't contracted to any club. City approached the lad, received an International Transfer Certificate (ITC) from the French Football Federation and Jérémy became a City player.

Pierre Dreossi, the Rennes technical director then decided that things had gone horribly wrong for his club and lodged a complaint to FIFA. The grounds for this complaint was that Hélan had signed a pre-contract agreement with Rennes at the age of 13 and that agreement had been broken. The affair took on an Inspector Clouseauish mantel when no trace could be found of this agreement but the club are prepared to swear on the Eifel Tower that it existed.

The crux of the matter is that Jérémy Hélan is a very talented player and the real gripe for Rennes is not the fact they've been deprived of a useful defender but the idea that they've not been able to cash in on him on the international transfer market.

Although this is a FIFA matter, Michel Platini and his UEFA cohorts have been very vocal recently on the movement of young footballers across international boundries, Arsene Wenger was even accused of 'Trafficking Young People' - Sacre Bleu, there's an awful lot of Frenchmen involved in this saga.

So, in essence it boils down to City signing an out of contract player and Rennes screaming 'faux' because an agreement, not a contract, signed by a 13 year old child has not been honoured. We'll see how this one pans out but I can't see the Blues having too much to worry about. There are dark forces at work when it comes to English clubs at the moment but I can't see Rennes having a leg to stand on in this case.