It may have escaped some – with much of the focus centred on his plans to “kill Chelsea” – but José Mourinho said what many believe last week. When asked about Arsenal’s performances and their youth development, he said that it was not really about raising young footballers, it was about taking some of the best 16-year-olds from other clubs.

Note the word “taking”, rather than “buying”. Because that is what it amounts to. A ridiculous loophole in legislation allows clubs to cherrypick Europe’s most talented young players on their 16th birthday, while paying minimal compensation to the club who spotted and trained them.

It is not only Arsenal, who have seven such players on their books, who do it. Manchester United have three and Chelsea four (with a further two on their way). At the heart of the issue is the fact that in most countries clubs can sign players to professional contracts only after their 16th birthday. Before that they are virtual free agents. All a club or an agent has to do is approach the player’s parents before he turns 16 and persuade them their child is better off elsewhere. Then, on his 16th, he signs a professional contract with his new club and moves.

His former club receive little; Uefa, European football’s governing body, has a compensation system (based on youth international appearances), but it is capped at about £300,000. “It’s theft, plain and simple,” Ivan Ruggeri, the president of Atalanta, the Serie A club, said last year. He has good reason to be aggrieved; over the past decade, his club’s academy, one of the best in Europe, has lost six players to foreign clubs, receiving less than £500,000 in compensation. Given that they spend more than £3 million a year on their youth set-up, you can see how serious the situation is. “We fund our youth football by developing players and selling them,” Ruggeri said. “How are we supposed to do that if we just lose them for close to nothing?”

Michel Platini, the Uefa president, is on the same wavelength. “I’m going to fight against the way business is conducted now,” he said last week. “I’m against those who buy underage kids. A player’s first professional contract must be signed with the club who raised him. But without help from politicians, there isn’t much we can do.”

He is right. While Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, can stop underage players from moving to a different country for “footballing reasons”, within the European Union it is largely powerless. Football’s gatekeepers cannot stop an amateur player from moving to another part of the EU. At the same time, the sport has a responsibility to safeguard the development of young players and without the financial incentive of being able to sell talent for substantial sums now and again, why should clubs invest in developing youngsters?

So what can be done? Rather than trying to predict how good a player will be at 16 and determining his value, why not let the market decide a player’s worth? What if, instead of a tribunal setting a fee, compensation was fixed at a percentage of the players’ wages for the rest of his career?

Take Giuseppe Rossi, whom Manchester United signed from Parma in 2004 for £200,000 (a fee determined by Uefa’s compensation parameters). Rossi was sold to Villarreal for £6.7 million last summer, netting United a £6.5 million profit and leaving Parma to gnash their teeth in anger.

But what if, instead of the compensation, Parma were to receive 5 per cent of Rossi’s wages for the rest of his career? United would have signed him on a free transfer and then been liable for only 5 per cent of the wages he earned while he was on their books (in this case, no more than £30,000). Villarreal would now be paying the 5 per cent and then, after that, the bill would go to whichever club he plays for until he hangs up his boots. If he goes on to earn £30 million over the next 15 years; Parma would get £1.5 million, spread out over time.

Of course, sometimes clubs prefer to negotiate among themselves, as happened when Cesc Fàbregas left Barcelona at 16. Arsenal could have paid the fee Uefa determined, but it would have been a long process. Instead, the clubs agreed a fee of about £500,000, partly to avoid the headache, partly because they were on good terms and partly because Barcelona owed Arsenal money from previous deals. Under this proposal, clubs would still be free to negotiate their own deal, but if they fail to do so, the player would move for free and the 5 per cent “tax” would kick in. It is a modest suggestion, but one that seems fairer than the present system.

Haitian history lesson

One of the neat things about sport is that every corner of the world can have its own heroes. And often these heroes are relatively unknown to the rest of the world.

Manno Sanon, who was voted Haiti’s Sportsman of the Century, passed away last month. He may not be a household name in Europe, but he had the rare distinction of scoring against Italy and Argentina (the latter is a gem, it is on YouTube) in the 1974 World Cup finals.

But while the level of Haiti’s football may be poor, Sanon is not the only Haitian to have made history in the World Cup. Joe Gaetjens, whose goal sealed the most stunning upset in the history of the sport – the United States’ 1-0 win over England in the 1950 World Cup finals – was Haitian (and, in fact, never became a US citizen).

Blatter’s muscle-flexing

Fifa has a rule whereby it can suspend any member association if it deems it to be subject to political interference. So, for example, if Parliament were to pass a law that decreed that David Beckham had to win his 100th cap against France this month or that Gordon Brown’s nephew should replace Brian Barwick at the FA, Fifa could step in. It could prevent English clubs from signing foreign players, it could ban English clubs from European competition and kick England out of qualifying for the World Cup.

That is fair enough. That is what those powers are meant for. But last week Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, went overboard in flexing his muscles. He reminded us that it would take “only six hours” to convene an emergency Fifa board meeting and ban Spain from international football. Spain’s crime? The Government wants FA elections to be held before this summer’s Beijing Olympic Games, the FA wants to hold them in November.

Surely Fifa has more important things to worry about. Kicking Barcelona out of the Champions League and Spain out of Euro 2008 – we will believe it when we see it.