We know he's not our player......I've seen him holding a Marseille shirt. Why does making an official statement deny us any legal action? It depends what the club say. If they say he was transferred amicably to Marseille then fine. All good. But staying silent, is not the correct way to go here. Fans will lose trust, especially on the back of this shambolic season. You have to do the right thing. Making an official announcement over a player, then he turns up at another club, you just cannot stay silent on that...….or rather you can, but fans will use it against you and will lose faith for sure.
And given the nature in which we sign young players etc, does saying nothing give the impression that you can just change your mind if you sign a contract with us? Or that we aren’t to be trusted when making such deals? I agree, the club need to say something. Announcing a signing and then watching as he signs for someone else is a terrible look.
We're all going to have so much fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our smiles..... It's a complete shambles. It makes us look incompetent. It makes us look weak. It makes us unattractive to other potential young players as if we aren't already given that we don't allow them a chance in the first team or palm them off to Udinese. Udinese is of little use to us. We cannot even get their best players like de Paul to play for us.
The man at ESSO has just told me confidentially that Marseille are announcing the signing of Sarr on a free transfer at 16.00 UK time. Tring have apparently also picked up Deulofeu as a free agent this morning.
So, in partial defence of the club, a couple of things - These type of things have happened in football and to Watford pre-pozzo era. I appreciate there were probably different reasons and I may have the names wrong, but two I'm thinking of are Junior and Devaney? I'm sure some of you on here know more than me about these 2 cases Next thing - no point forcing him to come over, so if we've struck a deal then hopefully in works for all parties one way or another. Also - for me personally I try not to get too excited about anyone who joins us until they actually come over to England, go to training and are announced in our playing squads. Not all transfers work that way with the club now. If you detach yourself from the player and just see him as a potential signing still then it's a lot easier. Lastly - we've probably just made a few million or have the potential to make that or more for pretty much nothing. Easy to dismiss something like this, but every penny counts and a few extra million in the club can only be a good thing.
So who has messed up on this one? Sa Just like the Zuniga £4m botch up. Someone is culpable. But we’ll say nothing and move on.
I'm saying someone is culpable and am hoping that either The Athletic or the club will give us a clue.
Junior - Nothing like this - He went on a pre-season tour, when he tried to get back in the country it was found he had the wrong passport and wasnt eligible. This was a bit of a shock as we were his 3rd english club (Walsall and Derby from memory) and he had a decent record. Martin Devaney - Even less like this - He signed, played a friendly, had a case of fisticuffs at the training ground (allegedly) and was promptly sold/released onwards.
The financials will be the go-to thing for the clappers in this case. Not the utterly laughable and hugely questionable situation that's occurred. Just like with Lukebakio who didn't want to come anywhere near the club again. I can't think of a scenario like this involving other clubs offhand, let alone for Watford. Always bloody us. We'd point and laugh if it happened to anyone else.
And looking at the stories floating around, Cucho, Suarez and Estupinan are hardly falling over themselves to join either lets be honest. How many players since being in the PL have we loaned out to bring back as regulars? I can think of Doucoure and even then he had to wait a long time. I suspect the minute Gueye caught wind of going to Udinese and perhaps being shifted around on loan for the next few seasons, he wanted no part of it and would rather realise his talent now.
Marseille finished 2nd in Ligue 1 last season and already have a quality midfield, he wouldn't be guaranteed to go straight in to their starting XI. Meanwhile, given how Capoue has performed since the restart a spot should open up in Gueye's position with us fairly soon. The only real plus point for Marseille is that they are also in the Champion's League next season which is obviously a good opportunity. Even if Gueye isn't trusted yet to be a starter for their CL games, squad rotation for the CL games means he should at least get some starts for them in Ligue 1 and could get CL experience from the bench. Wage wise I doubt Marseille would have offered much different from us. Of course it is still unclear if we'll be in the PL next year though, and fair enough if he didn't want to risk having to join us in the Championship. Maybe things are being delayed at our end with regards to announcing anything until we know which division we'll be in next season?
FIFA I imagine will want Watford and Marseille to come to a quiet agreement 'out of court'. If that can't happen they will try to mediate. If that fails it will end up in court. I know people want immediate answers but you will have to be patient. This may take a while.... The kid will remain a Marseille player, the question is how much does Marseille have to pay, lets hope its a wheel barrow full of cash.
FIFA has its own quasi-judicial committee to deal with these sorts of things and issue a ruling. The most recent high profile example of it in action was Nantes v Cardiff over Sala. It’s not mediation, it’s a proper adversarial process with independent people deciding who wins. As always though if the loser disagrees with the outcome they can trot off to CAS.
Thanks for the reply, good to hear the stories. I agree they are different circumstances - however, if either of them (especially the Junior one) happened now, the Pozzos / club would be taking an almighty bashing on here for them. My point stands that these things happen - and if I could be bothered to, which unfortunately I can't, I would hazard a guess it's not just us it happens to.
In other words, there aren't any that come to mind. Because it doesn't happen which is why you were forced to reference two completely different scenarios from 15 years ago.
I don't think there are many high profile or memorable examples of pre-contracts being broken but it certainly goes on. The FIFA website lists some of its decisions and the striking thing is most are anonymous, so it's impossible to attribute them to specific clubs and players: https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/leg...yer-status-committee/decisions/#club-disputes I think this damages Pozzo's reputation with Watford fans but outside of our club it will barely make a ripple.
Really? Given the regularity with which they like to sign these foreign youngsters and then ship them around to different clubs, you don’t think this affects them? That one signing has effectively said ‘this isn’t for me’ and just reneged on what’s supposedly been signed. Couple that with the story that we withheld a payment to one of Sarr’s first clubs and were reportedly flagged to FIFA for it, it could be claimed that our owner is getting a reputation within football that isn’t enviable.
Not to mention the Mbaye stuff, the dodgy HSBC letter, Zuniga fiasco, and links to the Belgian agent being investigated for various shenanigans.
I think this was fairly unusual circumstance, new agent decides he wants to create a situation from which he can earn a lot of money. If there is any damage it’s to this agent who clubs simply may not trust or open doors in future.
If he's getting any 'reputation within football', it's probably that he's in exactly the right business because they're all as bad as one another. We all know agents and players chase money most of the time. Gueye hasn't jumped ship because allegedly we were about to send him to Udinese - I'd put my house on it being because his new agent saw the deal he'd signed with us and knew he could extract more cash from someone else (or even us). Lets not pretend Saint Gueye of France has done a bunk because he's looked Gino in the eyes and ran away because he saw a bad man. As for the Sarr thing, Duxbury went on the record about that and responded. I'm no massive expert on business and finance but am pretty sure any business with a nine figure turnover is likely to have the odd disgruntled creditor waving an unpaid bill at them from time to time. **** happens. I support the team, not the finance director. My support isn't conditional on the bills being paid on time. I honestly think this mainly affects Watford's reputation with some football journalists, who need things to write about and love nothing more than balancing a positive with a negative. So we'll get a good win or do something merit-worthy off the pitch and they'll throw in a link back to a story like the Sarr thing or Gray's party. It's disappointing when we give them ammo like that and I suspect Gino is probably looking at his lawyers and PR people and thinking the same. I get frustrated when the club's name gets dragged through the mud. But equally, I suspect outside of social media most people are looking at the Gueye thing - and that's assuming they're looking, as frankly it's hardly blockbuster stuff - as a player and agent being disrespectful to Watford, not us shafting him somehow. I think we have to be a bit cautious throwing some stuff into the mix luke. The Belgian agent investigation has never led back to Gino or the club that I'm aware of. Mbaye is a no mark and unless it's reversed on appeal we've won that case with FIFA. And while the HSBC letter thing was reputationally bad and cost the club a few million in fines, I'm 99% sure the independent panel was very clear Gino was not personally at fault - and crucially, had the money all along anyway.
I don’t disagree with most of that. But regardless of the rights or wrongs, as of right now, Watford publicly announced a signing. And that signing has publicly now been announced as going somewhere else - indeed it’s claimed he’s already at their training camp. Perhaps our silence about the details is worthwhile. But I think for the clubs PR sake, they need to at least acknowledge it at this point. My current suspicion is that the we’ve had our pants pulled down, and rather than admit as much, the club just won’t comment and hope history forgets. I also have no doubts that money is likely the big driver here for the player/agent. But it’s widely reported that the Udinese loan plan has also been a factor so it can’t be dismissed out of hand. Given the way they’ve been playing and the standard of their squad, I’d say he’s right to be concerned about it as well! But, if we are in the right, FIFA have to be strong on this. It makes a mockery of the ‘Bosman’ rule if any pre-contract you sign can just be disregarded if a bigger one comes along in those 6 months.
Yeah, fair enough. I’ve probably been a bit too quick to lump on here. That said, and I’ll concede it’s possibly a consequence of following Watford much closer than others, it does seem as though we’re involved in unusual contractual disputes than other clubs.
I don't quite get the last sentence Burnsy. Either Watford think they have a legitimate and enforceable pre-contract agreement with Gueye or they don't. I presume they wouldn't have announced him in April if they thought it more likely than not the pre-contract wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. It's not like they have a track record of automatically announcing every young signing or that putting something on your own website makes it more of a done deal. It may have been part of a plan to apply a bit of extra pressure to the player/his agent I guess, but even that has limited use. I think it was L'Equipe which said the club had sent legal letters to various potential suitors to warn them off - that doesn't strike me as something they'd do if they just planned to brush the saga under the carpet. The next moves are going to be down a legal avenue and will no doubt take months to go anywhere. In the meantime as far as I'm aware there's nothing Watford can do to stop him playing for Marseille. That's not down to impotence on Watford's part, it's just how things work. And even if we lose at the end of this, it'll come down to the exact reasons why to decide whether Gino's had his pants pulled down on this deal. Obviously if it turns out the pre-contract was written on a napkin or he was made to sign it under duress the club will look like plonkers. But if it's some sort of relatively obscure legal technicality or even a new legal argument that wins the case and sets a precedent, that's life. I've made a similar argument with the Zuniga thing. If we ended up having to pay out to Napoli because someone didn't do their job right by overlooking a precedent saying U23 games count as competitive fixtures, then that's unprofessional and worthy of criticism. But if it just came down to us having a different interpretation of a wording than Napoli, and a FIFA panel decided to side with Napoli having never made a ruling on that point before, you probably just have to take it on the chin. I think it's a symptom of dealing with intermediaries and always being on the fringe of things. I imagine these types of deals, especially for young players, need the club to move quickly and probably use some of their own fixers to get things over the line. It's easy to overlook but half the big clubs in Spain have been hauled over the coals for playing fast and loose with the rules on pre-contracts and young signings in recent years. What frustrates me a lot more is it seems we regularly go to this effort and yet it's produced bog all for the first team so far. As a fan that worries me a lot more than a whiny agent or another club threatening us with a report to FIFA.
Gino considers the matter 'closed' and believes that what Watford fans want right now is for us to plow on with our relegation fight, with our plans for levelling up our defence and build build build for another jolly good crack at The Premier League.
No doubt there are situations resolved privately. Still waiting on those public ones that apparently have happened loads that the other guy posted about. If we don't bring embarrassment on ourselves as a club, someone is happy to do it for us.
