There is also already a transfer market for children and young people in amateur football. Things are often tough in two change windows. Sufferers are suspended youth players.
There is also already a transfer market for children and young people in amateur football. In two Interchangeable windows It’s often tough. Sufferers are suspended youth players. The DFB is trying to determine the rules – and is possibly walking on legal slippery ice.
Rainer Buch is angry. “Here children are being punished with a football ban for no reason”he complains, “And we parents are powerless to stand by. Most of us don’t even know the rules.” The reason for Buch’s outrage are transfer bans and transfer demands in youth football. His son, born in 2011, wanted to change clubs in the summer – and was therefore banned from his old club.
Although he had canceled his club membership on time on June 30th, the transferring club is allowed to do so according to the youth regulations of the responsible regional association, in this case the Saarland Football Association (SFV). If it had stayed that way, the boy would not have been allowed to play a game for his new team until November 1st. The transferring club does not even have to give a reason for the ban.
DFB lays Training compensation firmly
In this case, Rainer Buch and his son’s old club, for which he also worked as a volunteer coach, did not part on good terms. The club emphasizes that blocking children is not usual practice for them.
In the Buch case it was still about open membership fees, which they wanted to secure through the ban, and about the son speaking out to a trainer “very offensive” expressed: “So he was involved in the conflict.” Buch, on the other hand, speaks of pure arbitrariness and a personal conflict that was carried out on the back of his child.
There are thousands of cases like this every year, nationwide. And that is why there is a need for regulation, including from a financial perspective, says the German Football Association (DFB). The DFB therefore has one in paragraph 3 of its youth regulations “training compensation” set for the transferring club. A kind of transfer fee, payable for players from U13 onwards.
The amount is calculated based on the league of the first men’s team. A Bundesliga team therefore has to pay 1,500 euros as a basic amount for a D youth player, plus 200 euros per year that the talent played in the transferring club. For A and B juniors it is even 2,500 euros. The amounts for clubs from lower leagues are correspondingly lower.
DFB: “To protect the clubs and teams”
For a twelve-year-old who has been with the club since the minis, it can quickly cost 700 euros. If the money is in the new club’s account, it must release the player. The training compensation is a recognition of the work of the transferring club, prevented “Club hopping already in the youth sector” and are overall useful and proven “to protect the clubs and teams”writes the DFB to Sportschau.
Many state associations have adopted this regulation, along with the money table drawn up by the DFB, into their respective youth regulations: Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Hesse, Lower Rhine, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony , the Southwest German Football Association – and since May 2023 also the Saarland Association. Other regional associations have adopted the waiting periods from the DFB, but not the money table.
fear of Attempts to lure people away the NLZ
In Saarland there were 1,200 changes in the youth sector last summer, at 500 clubs, says Rainer Lauffer. The youth leader of the Saarland Football Association says that he is not a fan of this regulation, which was decided by a majority of the clubs at the association conference: “But I too perhaps have to realize: The times of Shake hands and Fair play, which I still cultivated as a youth leader, are over in many places in youth football. The regulations now come from the DFB and are intended to curb disputes.”
In addition, the clubs wanted to protect themselves from headhunting from the youth training centers (NLZ). And the prevailing opinion is that the professionals have the money, so they should also pay for talent.
Otherwise, the small clubs will only be financially compensated by the DFB and the German Football League once the child has played his first professional game with the men.
Children are often the losers
Lauffer intervened in the conflict over Rainer Buch’s son. The fronts had hardened between the club and the father. Buch or his son’s new club could have paid – in his case 150 euros for the release – but the father rigorously refused. Lauffer says he didn’t understand that. But the book emphasizes that it is “Child trafficking in amateur football. An absolutely immoral game that I didn’t want to take part in on principle.” And that, even though him “my son’s tears” would have touched.
The children are often the ones who suffer in such changes. Especially when little or nothing is regulated. Sometimes there is a lot of haggling over transfer fees for children. Take Berlin, for example, which has not adopted the DFB’s monetary table: Approval is only possible with the club’s consent. Even if the new club or the parents voluntarily pay the amount specified by the DFB, the old club does not have to release the player. Then children who change clubs in the summer are banned until November.
Players in a youth gaming community in the Eifel
This happens often in Berlin with numerous clubs in a small area and lots of club changes and animosity between the clubs. In addition, there are more and more clubs that have developed a business model with child transfers, several youth leaders tell the sports show.
“These clubs pay bonuses from the B youth level onwards and also need money from so-called transfers.”says Gerd Thomas, chairman of FC Internationale Berlin: “It is sometimes impossible to find solutions in the interests of the children with some clubs.” Because there are also Berlin clubs that generally reject such transfer payments – the child then has to serve the ban.
Vain hope for reason
Burak Isikdaglioglu, youth leader and vice president at Berliner AK, describes a case he experienced this summer: “Amounts of 75 or 100 euros are still okay as training compensation, but we had to transfer 3,000 euros to a certain club for six B and C youth players. That really hurt us.” The BAK mostly plays in the top leagues in Berlin – and is therefore dependent on access.
The Berlin Football Association (BFV) confirms such cases, writes from “realistic release amounts”, which led to the topic being discussed again in the youth advisory board in October after many years in which the clubs had relied on self-cleaning and common sense. The aim in Berlin is to have a new regulation by July 1, 2024.
In the capital, but also elsewhere, youth players are often at the mercy of their old club. Things get even worse if the child wants to go in the winter. In the second change window, which begins on January 1st. Then an eleven-year-old D youth player is banned for six months from the last league game for the old club. That means: last game in mid-December for the old club, first game for the new club in mid-May.
DFB discusses adjustments
Burak Isikdaglioglu describes a case that shows how brutal the morals in youth football can sometimes be. His Berliner AK asked for a transfer fee of 10,000 euros for a club that announced in March that it wanted to get 13 players from a team in the summer. The new club didn’t want to pay. The players then no longer appeared for the BAK from March onwards, so they were allowed to leave for free and were eligible to play again at the start of the season in early September. Isikdaglioglu: “That hurt us both sportingly and economically.”
Such cases confirm the DFB’s stance. On December 8th, the board and presidium will discuss “Adjustments to training compensation”. Rainer Lauffer from the Saarland Association, a member of the DFB youth advisory board, provides insights: The age for training compensation when changing clubs should be reduced. Clubs may have to pay for U11 players – otherwise ten-year-olds will be banned.
Two youth players fighting for the ball
The background, says Lauffer, is that the youth training centers are scouting younger and younger players. This is because many performance centers already play against each other in tournament form at the U12 level.
Lauffer sees this as a kind “nationwide competition”which one could certainly see critically: “This means competitive football at an even younger age. Our amateur clubs complain that the NLZ is reaching them earlier and earlier. Some people see this as poaching – and that has to be paid for.”
Doubts about the legality of Training compensation
The renowned sports lawyer Gregor Reiter, who was also managing director of the German Football Player Agents Association for a long time, has a clear opinion on how all of this should be classified legally: “What the DFB and its regional associations are doing, with suspensions and changes, and also making them dependent on flat-rate training compensation for children in the amateur sector – all of this is legally untenable.”
There is indeed a fundamental ruling by the European Court of Justice that would allow bans on changes for sporting reasons – but only for the professional sector in order to regulate competition from a sporting and economic point of view. There are no such reasons in children’s and youth football, that would be obvious: “If someone were to sue against it, it can be assumed that the system would collapse.” The DFB sees it differently: “Waiting periods after changing clubs protect the integrity of the competition and are generally legally possible”.
“So that the madness will end”
Rainer Buch actually wanted to take civil action against his son’s ban, his lawyer had already been activated – then his son’s old club gave in. Burak Isikdaglioglu has just filed a lawsuit in Berlin. In September, before the sports court of the Berlin Football Association, he was able to lift the ban on an A-youth player whose old club had demanded 500 euros for his release.
The BFV sports court pointed out that the DFB regulations for training compensation were not noted in the Berlin youth regulations – and hence the monetary demand “an inadmissible demand” has no legal basis. The youth leader of the Berliner AK hopes that he has achieved a fundamental ruling, “so that the madness finally comes to an end”.