Aspiring young footballers are being held hostage by clubs with "contracts" which may not be worth the paper they are written on, according to Children's Commissioner Tam Baillie.
Clubs tie 10-year-olds to agreements which forbid them from playing for other clubs, and can even restrict them from playing for their school team despite guidance to deter the practice by the Scottish Football Association (SFA), Holyrood's Public Petitions Committee heard.
Mr Baillie presented a raft of recommendations to prevent children's rights being breached, including the freedom for children to give 28 days' notice to resign from a club.
Children's careers can be restricted by clubs who request payments from rivals for children who have come through their academies but fail to reach an agreement.
Mr Baillie said: "If the young person chooses to get out of that 'contract' they are sometimes left as a hostage to the original club, because there is a dispute over the payment and this can last for quite a period of time.
"In theory, you could have them held year on year because the payments have not been made."
He added: "There is an issue about 10-year-olds signing what they think are contracts, and potentially being held to those right through their formative years.
"There is an issue about 15-year-olds being held to contracts, sometimes against their wishes, for a further two years until they are 17.
"And I think there are issues in respect of the perception that they are not allowed to play for clubs or their behaviour is restricted by the 'contracts', which I would put in inverted commas because there is quite a bit of debate about whether they are contracts or not.
"As far as the children are concerned, they have signed a contract and it impacts on their behaviour because they don't get to play for schools on some occasions, not all, and there are certainly restrictive practices there."
He continued: "It doesn't matter whether these contracts are worth the paper they are written on or not.
"The perception of the children and young people involved is that they are contracts."
Mr Baillie said "the odds are stacked against children and young people" when the system to protect their rights breaks down.
"This business of not being allowed to play for their school, certainly the SFA has tried to rectify that to make clear that that is not a condition that can be built in, but it is still at the discretion of the clubs and one of the recommendations is to remove that," he said.
"The recommendations are that a young person should have the same period of notice as they would in youth football.
"In other words, if they want to move clubs they can give 28 days' notice and that would be the end of it and they can go elsewhere."
He added: "Unless they implement these recommendations I think we run the risk of being in breach of children's rights, and at some point there may be a challenge in that because of the way we have allowed our children to be treated in their pursuit of an aspiration of becoming a football player."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article