Premier League club Manchester City have been accused of trying to lay hold of former academy prospect Gabriel Fernando Almeida by creating ‘fake’ role for his father at the club.
According to Goal, the club had taken such step in order not to attract possible punishments in the way of fines and transfer bans over a breach of the Premier League rule.
The Premier League rules for the season had stated: “No club shall induce or attempt to induce a player to become registered as a student by that club by offering him, or any person connected with him, either directly or indirectly, a benefit or payment of any description whether in cash or in kind.”
In essence, any money paid to an underage player’s family in order to influence a decision on the individual’s career is a contravention of the law.
Almeida, who was said to have joined City as an early teenager in 2011, couldn’t sign a professional contract with the club at the time due his young age.
Thus, the club allegedly created an avenue which would see City syphon thousands of pounds to the player’s family just to have him remain at Etihad before his 16th birthday after when he would have been free to negotiate with other sides.
Almeida’s father, who claimed to have never actually worked for the club despite receiving monthly expense payments of around £1,000 between September 2011 and June 2012 admitted to sitting through two separate scouting training sessions at City.
However, he added that those sessions were exclusively in English – a language he does not understand.
Speaking to The Athletic, in Portuguese, Almeida said: “The truth is that they paid me but I did not work. In truth, they tricked us because I do not speak English. They did arrange for me to take a course in scouting. I went to the classroom on two occasions, to appear there at the course. It was inside Manchester City.”
City deny the allegations levelled against them, with a club spokesperson stating: “The limited records that exist given the nature of the work involved and the significant passage of time of almost a decade, suggest that Mr Almeida (Snr) was a casual scout for a period within Gabriel’s time with the club, for which he was reimbursed expenses.”
Almeida insists there was no ‘casual scouting’, however.
“I didn’t do anything. It was a lie. I didn’t go and do anything,” he said, adding: “They know. They know everything. They put me down as a worker. There’s no way that the club would not know.”
The report further states that it is unclear whether the Premier League will investigate the matter, or what the punishment would be if wrongdoing is found to have taken place.
Manchester City did escape a two-year ban from the Champions League last year, for a serious breach of Uefa’s financial fair play rules has been overturned by the court of arbitration for sport, which also reduced the club’s fine to €10m (£9m) from €30m.
