Craig Brown believes FIFA should increase compensation fees payable to clubs who lose their best young talent.
The Aberdeen manager has spoken out after 18-year-old winger Ryan Fraser opted to reject the offer of a new contract and indicated his desire to move on after playing just two full matches for the club.
Aberdeen have already lost Scotland under-19 defender Jack Grimmer and Scotland under-21 midfielder Fraser Fyvie this year. Grimmer left for Fulham for a fee reported to be £200,000 and 19-year-old Fyvie signed for Wigan Athletic in the summer after refusing to extend his contract beyond December.
Last year Chris Maguire, who had been involved in the Scotland senior squad, also moved on; signing for Derby County after his deal expired, with the clubs eventually agreeing a fee to prevent a FIFA tribunal. It is a trend which has irked the Aberdeen manager, who believes the cost of young Scottish talent is far too cheap for cash-rich clubs in England.
"It will happen again for sure," said Brown, whose team face Motherwell in a William Hill Scottish Cup fourth-round replay at Fir Park tonight. "If we could stop it happening, we would stop it.
"My decision to stop it is at FIFA level. The compensation should be far, far more. The English clubs can take a gamble on them and make the boys starry-eyed with a bigger wage.
"If they had to pay compensation commensurate to a transfer fee, it would act as a bit of a deterrent. It wouldn't stop them because it's an uneven playing field in Europe. They get a couple of million from television and the top clubs in the English Premier League get £67m. They can gamble a couple of quid on a young player.
"If compensation was higher they would maybe think twice and we would get commensurate recompense to the work we put into that boy. I appeal to FIFA. They made the rule about compensation and for that they deserve credit. Now review it, see what little players have gone for, and say 'that was a steal, we must make it a reasonable amount'."
Brown has also been wary of the challenge presented to his players tonight, instructing them to practise penalties in case they face a shoot-out. "That is a distinct possibility in this fixture," he said.
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