Well,it is said that a club can only hold contract or any kind of talks with a player if only the players club agree. But do you think transfers are working that way?

Pretty sure to me that Clubs will ask Agents about players interest in transfer before making a bid.What do you think?

and yes relating it to Suarez case..do you think Suarez has given ok via his Agent for a Arsenal move or are arsenal simply wasting their time since Suarez has already told he wants out of England ?..i believe the former.

What are the rules exactly? Club cant speak to player or agent? Or just player?

Anyway, I would assume there has got to be some kind of intermediaries/commissary or whatever you want to call it. Some way of making an understanding without technically breaking rules.

I think they can't offer a co tract or pre contract but everythi g else is allowed. I'm sure players are sounded for interest before making bids, it would be nonsensical otherwise.

No one can really answer this for sure unless they've worked in the business. I would imagine if you know who the players agent is you could discretely ask about the players interest in a transfer but otherwise, surely, there are legal matters that come up if you try to.

Yes they do it is bloody obvious.... they do it through agents.

Its technically against the rules but good luck enforcing it when every single club in the world does it.

I actually dont know the rules..but it is widely believed that club can only talk to player and his agent about transfer only after the selling club gives OK.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Yes they do it is bloody obvious.... they do it through agents.

Its technically against the rules but good luck enforcing it when every single club in the world does it.

One more quest remains

so do you think Suarez has given ok to London move?

The rule is you can't talk with the player without his current club's consent like with Ashley Cole/Chelsea or Klose when he went to Bayern, these were cases of "tapping up".

Approaching the club or asking his agent for clarification on his client's current state is fair game if I'm not mistaken. That doesn't actually have to be official.

Yes.... Arsenal wouldn't be persisting otherwise.

It happens all the time, probably why you see all these Juventus agreed move for such and such lol.

Clubs don't bother moving for players unless they know there's a realistic chance of getting him.

Before anyone brings up Remy lol, he agreed to join but QPR come in with 100k a week compared to our 40k so its a little different.

But the whole finding out if players are interested through agents before fees are agreed does happen.

If you wish to discuss Suarez use the already existing threads. Keep discussion in this thread to the rules/regulations.

Zealous wrote:The rule is you can't talk with the player without his current club's consent like with Ashley Cole/Chelsea or Klose when he went to Bayern, these were cases of "tapping up".

Approaching the club or asking his agent for clarification on his client's current state is fair game if I'm not mistaken. That doesn't actually have to be official.  

well but i dont think there is any difference between talking with agent and Player when it comes to transfer matter.

Adit wrote:

Zealous wrote:The rule is you can't talk with the player without his current club's consent like with Ashley Cole/Chelsea or Klose when he went to Bayern, these were cases of "tapping up".

Approaching the club or asking his agent for clarification on his client's current state is fair game if I'm not mistaken. That doesn't actually have to be official.  

well but i dont think there is any difference between talking with agent and Player when it comes to transfer matter.

Maybe practically no but in an official sense it's a huge difference. After all it's the player who signed the contract not the agent.

An agent can talk to other clubs but if the player is not interested he can just tell his agent to refuse any advancements.

"Dodgy dealings are once again leading the football agenda. So at the risk of getting a knock on the door from the Football Association, can I please ask why on earth they persist with their antiquated, farcical tapping up rule? I have never understood the need for it and never will.

I was tapped up throughout my career, once by former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, if not personally. And I never thought that it was the slightest problem. In fact, I doubt that many transfer deals have ever been done without a tapping up process because no club want to be left with egg on their face by trying to sign a player who is not interested. That is why Eriksson, then manager of Fiorentina, arranged for a representative from his club to tap me up when I was playing for Barcelona in the late Eighties.

Johan Cruyff, the Barcelona manager, was playing me on the wing, which everyone knew was not my best position, so Sven quite rightly thought that I might be unsettled and fancy a move to a club who would play me as a striker. He did not phone me directly, of course, but got a Fiorentina official to contact my agent, Jon Holmes. Jon and I then approached Barcelona and asked whether they wanted to keep me. Naturally, they were reluctant to state publicly that I was surplus to requirements because it would have weakened their bargaining position so it all became an elaborate game of half truths. As it happened, I decided that I wanted to stay put and see how things panned out for the rest of the season. And neither did I move when Inter Milan manager Giovanni Trappattoni came in for me in 1987 after Terry Venables had been fired as Barcelona manager. Once again, Jon and I went to Barcelona to see what their view was and they said they wanted to keep me and that was the end of it. As it happened, Inter then signed Jurgen Klinsmann and won two Scudettos, so they didn't do too badly.

Eventually, in 1989, I left for Tottenham, again after being tapped up. And I happily admit to that because, in any business other than football, it is considered absolutely normal. If you are a top financial man at Merrill Lynch and HSBC fancy you, then they will send in a headhunter to tap you up. There would be no question of you being denied the chance to talk to them, so why should football be any different?

Tapping up is like speeding. We've all done it, though speeding is actually a more serious offence since it is against the law of the land. Tapping up, on the other hand, is not illegal; it is only an offence against the rules of football. And what a stupid rule it is.

I don't even have any problem with the Ashley Cole tapping-up situation, which caused so much bad feeling between Chelsea and Arsenal and stirred up so much debate about the morals of the game. That one was a bit unusual in that the player was involved directly and Chelsea, as is their wont, flaunted it a little bit. But the club who have the player under contract still have the right to say no, as Barcelona did when Inter Milan came in for me.

There was another classic example this summer when Owen Hargreaves, after signing a long-term contract, announced that he wanted to leave Bayern Munich.

The club basically said, sod it, you are not going and that is always an option, though that does not mean that the player or a rival club should be prohibited from asking the question.

The big issue this week, however, has been something much more sinister than tapping up, the accusation by Panorama that some managers take bungs. Sadly, all the programme did was confirm what we already know, that it does go on, without producing any firm evidence.

I have been saying for years that there is one simple way to stop all this — by not allowing clubs to pay agents for anything. At present, when an agent has agreed a deal, he asks for an extra payment — 50 grand, 100 grand, a million, whatever — for himself and says, 'I'm not taking that off my client, the player, but off the club', and some of this may then find its way back into the manager's pocket.

Now if the club were to be banned from paying agents, which is supposed to happen in January, they would only be able to get commission from the players they look after. And can you imagine how a player would react if he received, say, a million-pound bill from his agent? He would say something like: "What, all that for a few phone calls and half-an-hour negotiating my wages?" Once that started happening, agents would not only have to charge a reasonable amount, they would start wondering whether the game was worth it.

I see nothing wrong with players employing agents because they need their expertise with regard to contracts and the amount of money they can command. But for the life of me, I cannot understand why clubs cannot appoint a director or some other official to deal with transfer negotiations. If club A want a player from club B, the two designated officials discuss it, with an agent only brought in to sort out personal terms. Naturally, however, only after club A have tapped up the player."

-Lineker