Kieran Maguire: Man City can ‘exploit’ FA transfer loophole amid ‘huge’ claim
Man City can use their multi-club network to work around the recruitment rules introduced to the Premier League post-Brexit.
That is the opinion of finance expert Kieran Maguire, who spoke exclusively to Football Insider about the advantages City have in recruiting talent due to their multi-club ownership.
Man City are the flagship of the City Football Group, who own 11 clubs across the globe on four different continents.
Since Britain left the European Union in 2020, the Premier League has required players from EU countries to obtain a Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) from the FA on a points-based system.
However, the English FA now believes relaxing that system could help clubs give more opportunities to homegrown players, reduce the inflation of the transfer market and lower the total spend of English clubs after a record-breaking January window.
Maguire believes that the recruitment rules have hardly affected City as they can use their multi-club network to build up GBE points for younger players they eventually want to bring over to Manchester.
“I think this is good for the UK football industry as a whole,” Maguire told Football Insider’s Sean Fisher.
“But for a club of the calibre of Man City and the pool in which they are fishing in, it won’t make a blind bit of difference.
“Because they’ve got a well-established multi-club model they can exploit to build up the GBE points overseas, which they would have probably had to do for non-EU players anyway.
“So therefore we’re only looking at EU players in ages 16 to 17, in which City don’t really have a huge involvement in.
“City can also use their MCO as a safety net to protect them.”
In other news, Man City will expand global fanbase this summer with ‘novel’ India plan