Otherwise, the likes of David Platt, Ian Rush, John Barnes etc would still be with small-type clubs.”Andy Cole would still have gone for the same money [pounds 7m] because Manchester United wanted him then. They didn’t want to wait two years until his contract was over. I’m going to get his name and address and send him presents.”It’s total rubbish to say the small clubs will go to the wall. Eric Hall, a high-profile member of the breed, said it was the best news he had heard in his two decades in the game.”I now believe in Father Christmas,” he said “I really do I owe him [Bosman] a monster Christmas present.

We feel they should be able to retain those youngsters until their mid to late twenties. That is usually the time when players progress and clubs must be compensated should their players be transferred during that time.”There were less optimistic noises from the League. whose spokesman, Chris Hull, reiterated that three-quarters of professional players could lose their jobs. “Last season League clubs received pounds 9m from transfer market revenue, which is the lifeblood to all but a handful of sides. Some of that will be retained because transfers within contracts will still continue, but there will inevitably be a shortfall.”If the European Court’s ruling is implemented in its current state, it will have immense ramifications for football in this country….As many as 75 per cent of professional footballers could lose their full- time status in this country and the ruling will also have serious consequences for lower division clubs.”A group likely to gain from the Bosman case are agents, who will be able to demand higher salaries for their players in exchange for longer contracts. No fee is involved.Gordon Taylor, PFA chief executive, said he had made a similar proposal to the FA: “We need to have an adapted transfer system Clubs need to continue developing their young players. I hope there will be a period of calm reflection with Uefa and players’ unions across Europe, so the wider interests of the game as a whole can be protected.”There is a worry that smaller clubs might suffer, but we hope a system that has worked in England successfully for many years can betranslated into a European system, so that all countries can benefit.”The Professional ers’ Association and League Managers’ Association believe the transfer system in France could be a prototype to follow.

Players are signed as schoolboys on long-term contracts until they are 24 years old. A fee is payable if they are transferred in the interim, but when they reach the end of their contracts they are free to move on, unless they have secured longer-term deals. “We believe the playing field will soon be levelled out.”So did the FA’s chief executive, Graham Kelly, who appealed for calm. “The message from us is ‘Don’t panic, let’s get round the table and talk’,” he said, appealing for all parties to discuss the implications of a verdict which outlaws the market system that has operated for more than a century in England.”The worst-case scenario is that the transfer system across Europe will be unable to be maintained,” he said “Hopefully that may not be the case. “As far as limits on foreign players are concerned, the animal is dead.”"I hope that in a few years players will remember what I did for them,” added Bosman, whose five-year legal fight led to the ruling.Most pertinently, the Association believes clubs can easily avoid transfer fees by the simple expedient of finding a foreign club prepared to sign a player on a short-term basis.”There is nothing to stop a player joining Calais FC for a day, for example, and becoming a free agent,” Steve Double, an FA spokesman, said.

The transfer system that has existed for 100 years disintegrated into confusion at the hands of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.As expected, the court endorsed a recommendation made in September from one of its legal advisers, which backed the Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman’s fight to stop clubs having the right to buy and sell out-of-contract players.Even as Rick Parry, the chief executive of the Premier League, seized on the fact that the judges had not included transfers between clubs of the same country in the ruling, however, the escape clause was becoming narrower.”The ruling should not be a cause for panic or over-reaction,” he said, “particularly since, as we forecast, the judgement may only apply to transfers which involve a player moving between countries within the European Union.” Other opinion suggested he was wrong.”The animal [the European transfer system] is injured but the animal will die, believe me,” one of Bosman’s lawyers, Luc Misson, said. It will raise the capacity to 52,000 and will include a museum, media centre and sports injury clinic. Hampden will then be given five-star Uefa status and so be eligible to stage European finals.Victory for Celtic today against struggling Falkirk at Parkhead would give Tommy Burns’ side their 12th in the league, beating last season’s total of 11 wins. Celtic are four points behind Rangers, who do not play until Tuesday, when they meet Motherwell at Fir Park in a televised game.. Football

GUY HODGSON
Britain’s football authorities were clinging last night to what is almost certainly a forlorn hope that it can escape the major ramifications of yesterday’s decision in the Jean-Marc Bosman case. Scottish Football

Hampden Park was yesterday handed a pounds 23m Millennium Commission grant towards the pounds 51m redevelopment of Scotland’s national stadium.
The ground’s traditional south stand is to be demolished and replaced by a 16,000 state-of-the-art stand by 1998. Failing that, a few seasons in the Second Division would be lovely.n If you are interested in writing a Fan’s Eye View, please write to: Fan’s Eye View, Sports Desk, The Independent, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL, or phone 0171-293 2847..

If this happened then I would not even mind if I were wrongly accused – on account of my Home Counties accent – of jumping on the Rochdale bandwagon. The old spion kop is grassed over and the ground is shared with the Hornets rugby league team. Consequently, by the end of the season the pitch resembles a ploughed field: not exactly conducive to good football and therefore a factor that ought to favour Rochdale.The club shop sells anything from key-rings to match videos of a rather homely quality: I have a particular favourite of Dale thrashing Lincoln 5-1 in 1992 which includes a sensational goal by Andy Flounders (pounds 80,000 of pure class who lobbed the goalkeeper from the half-way line).In my dreams, Rochdale would be bought by a Jack Walker figure who would enable them to soar up the league into the Premiership in consecutive seasons and then win the European cup in glorious style. At least in Scotland, you knew that when someone said “Rochdale! Who the hell are they?”, they meant it and were not just rudely feigning ignorance.I got regular satisfaction from turning up for weekly five-a-side donning my 88-89 Dale shirt with the logo of the club sponsors on the front. Oh yes, the “All-in-One Garden Centre” complete with watering can was always certain to get a few laughs on the astro-turf.Spotland has changed in the last few years There is a new stand and plans for another to be built. But by then it was too late, I had contracted a particularly virulent strain of the Rochdale bug.On moving to Glasgow, the full extent of my eccentricity became even more apparent. But those were impressionable years and unbeknown to me, I was being indoctrinated and primed for years of disappointment and frustration.