Bumbling Bureaucracy

by Tyduffy

West Ham's rise from the cellar to escape relegation was the major story in the last two months of the season. The much maligned Carlos Tevez proves both pundits and manager wrong as he hits form at just the right time and carries the club on his shoulders and out of the relegation zone. With Chelsea haven fallen off the pace, this was the only real reason for watching the last two weeks of the Premiership calendar. West Ham are a big club that brings in money and plays entertaining football. It was a compelling narrative, and one that was too good to ruin.

Consequently, the Premier League let the Hammers off light, by most accounts. They did pay a record 5.5mGBP fine, but avoided the expected points deduction that would have ended their season. West Ham claimed to have terminated the third-party agreement in question (though only unilaterally), and that was enough for the league to declare him eligible for the remaining matches. This decision was convenient for the time, but has proven to be a massive miscalculation.

The critical point is that the ownership of Tevez has never been fully resolved. West Ham terminated their third-party agreement with MSI, but MSI never agreed to the termination, and the Premier League accepted this as de facto termination. The Premier League acted upon the position that Tevez was now owned fully by West Ham, when the reality was far from settled. This disparity came to the forefront when Manchester United attempted to buy Tevez. United agreed to pay 30m GBP to the owner of Tevez' registration, who that is remains unclear.

The Premier League stuck itself into a major Catch-22. If they allow the transfer to go through, the money would probably backhandedly go to MSI and Kia Joorabchian. This would refute their earlier claim that West Ham completely owned Tevez' regestration and make them complicit in a dealing that clearly violated league rules. However, if the league rejected the transfer outright it would be openly acknowledging that the situation was not in fact resolved. Both of these outcomes would bolster the legal claims of Sheffield Utd., that Tevez was in fact an ineligible player and West Ham should have been docked points and relegated.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Premier League took the easy way out and passed this issue on to FIFA, an organization that seems to pride itself on being bogged down and ineffective. FIFA, not to be outfoxed by the Premier League, claimed today that it was not the organization that should deal with this (why would a footballing matter be pertinent for the governing body of world football?) and recommended that the issue be sent to the Court for the Arbitration of Sport. Though, the High Court may settle it first, as representatives of Kia Joorabchian have filed writs agianst West Ham over the ownership of Tevez.

The bumbling indecisiveness of the FA and Premier League have blown an issue far out of proportion. They could have made a ruling in the preceding 8 months regarding Tevez' transfer, which would have been easiest, and they could have made the correct decision in April and forced West Ham to actually terminate the agreement. Instead, they took the convenient option. They dawdled and dilly-dallyed. They had a number of lunches, and, in the end, decided to cover their own ass rather than take decisive action. Once an easy decision, the Tevez saga is now a morass that could stretch well into next season and overshadows what should be excitement for the up-coming season.

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