Gary Stevens told Sky Sports News that FIFA must clarify the rules on the registration of young players.
Transfer disputes only tarnish the reputation of football
Gary Stevens has told
Sky Sports News that regulations on the registration of young players must be made clearer.
The former England and Tottenham defender believes steps must be taken so that protracted disputes over the game's emerging stars can be avoided in the future.
His comments came as FIFA confirmed they have been contacted by Fiorentina over Manchester United's signing of Italian Under-16 Michele Fornasier, although a formal investigation has as yet been opened.
United chief executive David Gill has already defended his club's role in signing Paul Pogba after Le Havre claimed United had given money and a house to the midfielder's parents.
Stretched
Looking at the overall picture surrounding player transfers rather than any one specific example, Stevens said: "There have always been rules and regulations but now those tramlines are being stretched and I think the authorities need to stipulate exactly what the rules and regulations are and if anybody does step outside of them they do have to be punished severely.
"Unfortunately, it is the lawyers who are potentially going to be the winners out of this situation because I can see more and more situations ending up in court or being settled once lawyers and solicitors have done hours and hours of work at huge hourly rates.
"When you are talking about young players, in my day, you couldn't sign associate schoolboy forms with a club until you were 14. Now you have academies taking players and officially signing them under their academy umbrella at eight and nine years of age.
"We are talking about innocent, young children who actually need to enjoy life as well as develop their football. I believe clubs are looking at players younger than eight and nine years of age, almost pre-primary school."
Compensation
Last week FIFA banned Chelsea from signing players until January 2011 after finding the London club guilty of inducing Gael Kakuta to break his contract at Lens and, as a general rule, Stevens welcomes the tougher stance from the game's international governing body - particularly with transfer fees still on an upward trend.
"I think a precedent is being set here," he said. "Clubs will say having spent three to five years developing this player who we have now lost, there should be some compensation payable.
"But maybe there is the opportunity to get some quite substantial compensation payable into our football club and if that is the case why shouldn't they try to maximise that situation?
"I'm a great believer that if you set the punishment tough enough it becomes a deterrent. If you put a transfer embargo on a club such as Chelsea, who are one of the biggest in the world, everybody else has to sit up and look and listen.
"Years ago a club would find a player and that player could well become a very good player for that side, an asset.
"But the game is now a multi-million pound business and some of these young players are not only going to be an asset for the club, but a financial asset that could be worth up to £30m.
"The whole scale of it has moved on in a big way. If you missed out on a player 30 years ago that was what you lost, these days you could be losing a huge asset."
