http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/sp...road.html?_r=0
Ben Lederman still gets up early for school every morning so he can be finished in time for soccer training. He still practices, every day, at La Masia, the famed youth academy of F.C. Barcelona. He still spends much of his time at a place where he occasionally crosses paths with stars like Lionel Messi.
But Lederman, whose entire family moved to Barcelona from California in 2011 hoping he would someday become the first American to play for the elite club, has not been allowed to play in an official game for Barcelona’s youth teams in more than a year. When FIFA penalized Barcelona last spring for what it called illegal international transfers, one less publicized piece of the fallout was the talented youth players like Lederman, playing abroad at clubs all over the world, who soon found their player registration cards revoked (or impossible to renew) as clubs and federations hurriedly hewed to eligibility rules they had long ignored.
That has left players like Lederman and their families in a strange soccer limbo: Lederman, now 15, continues to practice with his team but is not permitted to play in its games. After spending months on various appeals to FIFA (all of which were rejected), the Ledermans are considering a different approach to their plight: taking their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and challenging the basic notion of the rule that created it.
“It is killing him,” Ben’s father, Danny Lederman, said of his son’s not being allowed to play in matches. “And as his dad, it’s killing me, too, to see him like this. A year? Kids need to play; he practices, he practices, he practices, but he can’t play? It’s not right.”
He added: “I understand the rule was made to protect kids from being pulled away from their families. But our family made a choice to move to Spain together. Why should FIFA be able to tell our family where it has to live if we want our kid to play soccer?”
That is the core of the argument made by the Ledermans, and other families, against what is officially known as FIFA Article 19. The rule, created in 2001, has pure intentions: It was enacted largely as a way to stop agents and clubs from bringing children from less-developed non-European countries to the Continent for mass tryouts (before, frequently, abandoning them if a team did not sign them). In clear terms, the rule says that youth players are not allowed to register with a team in a country other than their own until they are 18.
FIFA lists three exceptions: If a player lives within 50 kilometers of a country’s border and his desired club is within 50 kilometers of the same border; if a player is moving from one European country to the other and is at least 16; or if a player’s family is moved to a different country for reasons “not linked to football.”
The last one has long been the subject of much debate — what constitutes a link? — but the reality, according to interviews with parents, coaches and officials, is that in the years before Barcelona’s sanctions, most national federations rarely did any digging into the players whom clubs wanted to register. Enforcement of the rule was sporadic, at best.
It was, essentially, “a free-for-all,” according to one soccer executive: big-name clubs imported young talents from around the world, often enticing players with “precontracts” or other financial incentives for their families. (Messi joined Barcelona at age 13 after the club agreed to pay for growth hormone treatments.)
One high-ranking Catalan soccer official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the federation’s policy had previously been one of blissful ignorance. The federation even told its clubs that, after Barcelona’s sanctions, the rules would begin “being 100 percent enforced” in March 2015.
“Before the FIFA ban, we just let everybody play, and that was it,” the official said. “We actually asked for all the legal documents, but we weren’t very strict in reviewing them.”
Oriol Sala, who runs a private soccer academy in Spain known as Kaptiva, said he used to advertise to prospective players’ families that their sons would be able to easily get Spanish or Catalan registration cards and join Spanish club teams if they impressed during practices and games. Ever since FIFA punished Barcelona, however, Sala said that “my entire business model had to change.”
“We have double sessions and top coaches and specialized training,” he said of his program, which charges interested families about 25,000 euros — more than $28,000 — for a child to take part in a six-month residency. “But,” he added, “we don’t offer player cards anymore. We can’t.”
The abrupt change by clubs and federations concerned about running afoul of FIFA left many families in difficult situations. Cintia Cuperman, a doctor from Miami, took her two sons to Spain in 2013. One of them, Nico, did well in tryouts and was accepted into Barcelona’s Escola program, which is a local outpost of the club’s soccer schools. Nico excelled while at Escola and joined another local club, where he received a registration card and began playing in games.
In February, after Barcelona’s appeal of its sanctions was denied, Nico’s card was taken away. “Suddenly I was getting requests from the club for 10 different kinds of documentation and proof of a job for me and all types of things,” Cuperman said. “I was stunned. When we first registered, and I saw the lines on the forms asking for those things, the guys at the club told me, ‘Put down anything — no one cares.’ ”
Left with few other options after losing his card, Nico recently returned to the United States.
Similar situations are playing out elsewhere as well. Art Acosta’s son, George, plays for the United States under-15 national team. In a news release earlier this year, U.S. Soccer identified George’s club team as Estudiantes de La Plata, a top club in Argentina.
In truth, according to Art Acosta, his son was training in Estudiantes’ youth system but playing for a semiaffiliated “second team,” which did not require him to have a FIFA-approved registration. After seeing the difficulties talented youth players were having becoming registered in Europe, he had decided “to go south” in search of a club for his son, a powerful attacking midfielder. He thought it would be easier. He quickly found it was not.
“Before all this there were loopholes everywhere and you could go anywhere,” he said. “Now, it’s literally impossible.”
With FIFA dealing with other crises, the prospects for changes to Article 19 are unclear. There are some logistical issues with the rule that may be addressed — increasingly lengthy processing times could be shorter for less murky appeals — but a significant alteration to the rule is more difficult to foresee.
A spokeswoman for FIFA said that “though in an individual case FIFA’s approach may appear harsh, it is only by enforcing the aforementioned rules in a very consistent and strict manner that the abuses of the past can be avoided.”
She added: “There is no other realistic measure than a ban with strict enforcement and limited exceptions that can ensure the protection being sought.”
The spokeswoman also noted that the the large majority of requests brought to the FIFA committee are accepted; in 2012, 1,527 out of 1,747 applications were approved; 1,637 out of 1,844 applications were approved in 2013; and 1,607 out of 1,793 applications were approved in 2014, she said.
Lucas Ferrer, a lawyer based in Barcelona who specializes in sports and who has worked on Article 19 cases with clubs like Barcelona and players, said he was skeptical about the chances for success in a potential Court of Arbitration for Sport case.
“I think there is a slim chance of that working,” he said. “The rule is a legitimate rule — it has been approved many times, and C.A.S. has confirmed it many times in other cases.”
He added: “The only way to bring this rule down is by either discussion with FIFA or, maybe, to bring something in the courts.”
That kind of legal challenge remains a possibility but, for the moment, families in limbo are taking a variety of approaches. Some, like Cuperman and her son, have given up and returned home. Others are still hoping to find a crack in the door; one father, whose son is waiting to hear on his appeal for registration with a major club in Central Europe, declined to speak on the record for this article because he wanted to “stay under the radar” and was concerned FIFA might react negatively. “We’re hoping to hear any day,” he said.
The Ledermans are staying put. Ben’s older brother, Dean, is a senior in high school in Barcelona, and the family does not want to uproot again before his graduation. “We have roots here, we have jobs here, we have visas,” Danny Lederman said. “We chose to live here as a family. That is what’s so frustrating.”
If Ben Lederman were a talented musician or a talented dancer, his father said, there would be no question if his family moved somewhere so he could learn from the best teachers in the world. In soccer, however, a family cannot simply decide in which country they want their child to play. Barcelona has offered support to the Ledermans but, after the club lost its own appeal against its punishments, there is little it can do.
Ferrer recalled a family he worked with on an Article 19 case not long ago. The family had two boys, and both were talented athletes, one in basketball and one in soccer.
He said, “That meant that one, the basketball boy, was every day off training with his club, learning from the coaches, playing in the games.”
He sighed. “The other?” Ferrer said. “The other was at home crying.”
Ben Lederman still gets up early for school every morning so he can be finished in time for soccer training. He still practices, every day, at La Masia, the famed youth academy of F.C. Barcelona. He still spends much of his time at a place where he occasionally crosses paths with stars like Lionel Messi.
But Lederman, whose entire family moved to Barcelona from California in 2011 hoping he would someday become the first American to play for the elite club, has not been allowed to play in an official game for Barcelona’s youth teams in more than a year. When FIFA penalized Barcelona last spring for what it called illegal international transfers, one less publicized piece of the fallout was the talented youth players like Lederman, playing abroad at clubs all over the world, who soon found their player registration cards revoked (or impossible to renew) as clubs and federations hurriedly hewed to eligibility rules they had long ignored.
That has left players like Lederman and their families in a strange soccer limbo: Lederman, now 15, continues to practice with his team but is not permitted to play in its games. After spending months on various appeals to FIFA (all of which were rejected), the Ledermans are considering a different approach to their plight: taking their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and challenging the basic notion of the rule that created it.
“It is killing him,” Ben’s father, Danny Lederman, said of his son’s not being allowed to play in matches. “And as his dad, it’s killing me, too, to see him like this. A year? Kids need to play; he practices, he practices, he practices, but he can’t play? It’s not right.”
He added: “I understand the rule was made to protect kids from being pulled away from their families. But our family made a choice to move to Spain together. Why should FIFA be able to tell our family where it has to live if we want our kid to play soccer?”
That is the core of the argument made by the Ledermans, and other families, against what is officially known as FIFA Article 19. The rule, created in 2001, has pure intentions: It was enacted largely as a way to stop agents and clubs from bringing children from less-developed non-European countries to the Continent for mass tryouts (before, frequently, abandoning them if a team did not sign them). In clear terms, the rule says that youth players are not allowed to register with a team in a country other than their own until they are 18.
FIFA lists three exceptions: If a player lives within 50 kilometers of a country’s border and his desired club is within 50 kilometers of the same border; if a player is moving from one European country to the other and is at least 16; or if a player’s family is moved to a different country for reasons “not linked to football.”
The last one has long been the subject of much debate — what constitutes a link? — but the reality, according to interviews with parents, coaches and officials, is that in the years before Barcelona’s sanctions, most national federations rarely did any digging into the players whom clubs wanted to register. Enforcement of the rule was sporadic, at best.
It was, essentially, “a free-for-all,” according to one soccer executive: big-name clubs imported young talents from around the world, often enticing players with “precontracts” or other financial incentives for their families. (Messi joined Barcelona at age 13 after the club agreed to pay for growth hormone treatments.)
One high-ranking Catalan soccer official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the federation’s policy had previously been one of blissful ignorance. The federation even told its clubs that, after Barcelona’s sanctions, the rules would begin “being 100 percent enforced” in March 2015.
“Before the FIFA ban, we just let everybody play, and that was it,” the official said. “We actually asked for all the legal documents, but we weren’t very strict in reviewing them.”
Oriol Sala, who runs a private soccer academy in Spain known as Kaptiva, said he used to advertise to prospective players’ families that their sons would be able to easily get Spanish or Catalan registration cards and join Spanish club teams if they impressed during practices and games. Ever since FIFA punished Barcelona, however, Sala said that “my entire business model had to change.”
“We have double sessions and top coaches and specialized training,” he said of his program, which charges interested families about 25,000 euros — more than $28,000 — for a child to take part in a six-month residency. “But,” he added, “we don’t offer player cards anymore. We can’t.”
The abrupt change by clubs and federations concerned about running afoul of FIFA left many families in difficult situations. Cintia Cuperman, a doctor from Miami, took her two sons to Spain in 2013. One of them, Nico, did well in tryouts and was accepted into Barcelona’s Escola program, which is a local outpost of the club’s soccer schools. Nico excelled while at Escola and joined another local club, where he received a registration card and began playing in games.
In February, after Barcelona’s appeal of its sanctions was denied, Nico’s card was taken away. “Suddenly I was getting requests from the club for 10 different kinds of documentation and proof of a job for me and all types of things,” Cuperman said. “I was stunned. When we first registered, and I saw the lines on the forms asking for those things, the guys at the club told me, ‘Put down anything — no one cares.’ ”
Left with few other options after losing his card, Nico recently returned to the United States.
Similar situations are playing out elsewhere as well. Art Acosta’s son, George, plays for the United States under-15 national team. In a news release earlier this year, U.S. Soccer identified George’s club team as Estudiantes de La Plata, a top club in Argentina.
In truth, according to Art Acosta, his son was training in Estudiantes’ youth system but playing for a semiaffiliated “second team,” which did not require him to have a FIFA-approved registration. After seeing the difficulties talented youth players were having becoming registered in Europe, he had decided “to go south” in search of a club for his son, a powerful attacking midfielder. He thought it would be easier. He quickly found it was not.
“Before all this there were loopholes everywhere and you could go anywhere,” he said. “Now, it’s literally impossible.”
With FIFA dealing with other crises, the prospects for changes to Article 19 are unclear. There are some logistical issues with the rule that may be addressed — increasingly lengthy processing times could be shorter for less murky appeals — but a significant alteration to the rule is more difficult to foresee.
A spokeswoman for FIFA said that “though in an individual case FIFA’s approach may appear harsh, it is only by enforcing the aforementioned rules in a very consistent and strict manner that the abuses of the past can be avoided.”
She added: “There is no other realistic measure than a ban with strict enforcement and limited exceptions that can ensure the protection being sought.”
The spokeswoman also noted that the the large majority of requests brought to the FIFA committee are accepted; in 2012, 1,527 out of 1,747 applications were approved; 1,637 out of 1,844 applications were approved in 2013; and 1,607 out of 1,793 applications were approved in 2014, she said.
Lucas Ferrer, a lawyer based in Barcelona who specializes in sports and who has worked on Article 19 cases with clubs like Barcelona and players, said he was skeptical about the chances for success in a potential Court of Arbitration for Sport case.
“I think there is a slim chance of that working,” he said. “The rule is a legitimate rule — it has been approved many times, and C.A.S. has confirmed it many times in other cases.”
He added: “The only way to bring this rule down is by either discussion with FIFA or, maybe, to bring something in the courts.”
That kind of legal challenge remains a possibility but, for the moment, families in limbo are taking a variety of approaches. Some, like Cuperman and her son, have given up and returned home. Others are still hoping to find a crack in the door; one father, whose son is waiting to hear on his appeal for registration with a major club in Central Europe, declined to speak on the record for this article because he wanted to “stay under the radar” and was concerned FIFA might react negatively. “We’re hoping to hear any day,” he said.
The Ledermans are staying put. Ben’s older brother, Dean, is a senior in high school in Barcelona, and the family does not want to uproot again before his graduation. “We have roots here, we have jobs here, we have visas,” Danny Lederman said. “We chose to live here as a family. That is what’s so frustrating.”
If Ben Lederman were a talented musician or a talented dancer, his father said, there would be no question if his family moved somewhere so he could learn from the best teachers in the world. In soccer, however, a family cannot simply decide in which country they want their child to play. Barcelona has offered support to the Ledermans but, after the club lost its own appeal against its punishments, there is little it can do.
Ferrer recalled a family he worked with on an Article 19 case not long ago. The family had two boys, and both were talented athletes, one in basketball and one in soccer.
He said, “That meant that one, the basketball boy, was every day off training with his club, learning from the coaches, playing in the games.”
He sighed. “The other?” Ferrer said. “The other was at home crying.”
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