Scout breaks silence in Kakuta row

THE France-based Chelsea scout at the centre of the Gael Kakuta affair has broken his silence on the controversy and insisted French clubs are willing participants in the transfer of their best talents abroad.

Chelsea were stunned when Fifa banned them from buying new players during the next two transfer windows after they were found guilty of inducing Gael Kakuta to break his contract with Lens in 2007. Chelsea are currently appealing the decision.

And Guy Hillion, the scout who first spotted Kakuta playing for France U16s in September 2006, has claimed Lens took advantage of the troubled financial situation Kakuta’s mother was in at the time he joined them, and that other French clubs are happy to sell their best prospects as long as it’s at the right price.

“French clubs try to picture themselves as the innocent victims of the system, but this is false,” Hillion said in an interview published in today’s France Football magazine.

“It’s all only a question of money. A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from an agent working for Le Havre chairman Jean-Paul Louvel, to ask me if I was interested in their best young player. They wanted a lot of money for him. At that price (which the magazine claim was €4m), he had no moral problem at all with letting a youngster go to England.”

On the Kakuta case specifically, Hillion added: “Kakuta’s mum is a widow, with five kids. When Lens approached Gael, she was in big financial trouble. She was in a position of weakness. When we started talking with her, we asked if she had signed something with Lens. She promised she had signed nothing, nothing at all. It was only six months later, when cleaning her house, that she found a piece of paper that she had signed and she didn’t even know what it was.”

The contract she found was actually a pre-contract agreement, registered with the French FA and the French league, signed because you cannot pay a player in France before he turns 16.

For that contract to come into effect, the player would have to turn 16 and also enter lycee, the French form of secondary school.

But because Kakuta was late starting his scholarship programme at Lens, he was not yet at lycee when he turned 16, which is why the contract had not taken effect.

That will be the pillar of the Chelsea defence when they make their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and a French lawyer they hired at the time of the signing, who produced a huge dossier on the transfer, has said there were no problems with the deal.

Also in the French magazine are the first quotes on the affair from Manchester United youngster Paul Pogba, whose former club Le Havre is making a similar claim against United for inducing the French star to break his contract to move to Old Trafford.

United threatened legal action after Le Havre made allegations of inducements and insist they have made no illicit payments and acted within the rules.

“It was really weird, I was on TV for the first time in my life and people called me from France to know what was going on,” Pogba said.

Pogba’s mother, Yeo Pogba, went on to criticise Le Havre for their treatment of her son. “Le Havre didn’t take care of my son,” she said. “We understood they didn’t believe in him. They offered other players of the same age contracts, but nothing to Paul. The trust was broken.”

Pogba is currently on a monthly salary of €700, the normal pay for a scholar, but next year, and for the following three, he will earn €20,000 a month, four more than he would have earned in France. “Obviously, this is a very good contract for Paul, but it’s not only money that makes a player and his parents leave the country,” said the player’s agent Gael Mahe.

“They also look at the way they are treated, the seriousness of the negotiations, the respect they are shown.”

Mahe said Pogba’s mother was touched United sent her a bunch of flowers, while Pogba himself was sent a United shirt with his name and the number 6 on it.

“They got the feeling that United respected them,” said Mahe.

Le Havre have asked Fifa to look closely at the deal but United are confident that they will avoid a Fifa sanction because Pogba’s ‘non-solicitation contract’ only covers the player’s involvement with other French clubs.