Well said minority. As I mentioned earlier, it takes two to tango. One cannot accuse another club of "poaching' (this refers to ALL clubs btw) if the PLAYER HIMSELF also wants to transfer.

If Nasri suddenly want to transfer to Barca, Arsenal also cannot say that Barca poached him, because his contract his running out, and maybe he prefer to play in Spain. They would simply have to swallow and accept it.

After doing some googling, I found this :

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport...ral-Harper.html

I quote:

"How Wenger got Fabregas
ARSENE WENGER knew all about the young Cesc Fabregas but was not allowed to watch him on Barcelona youth duty.
So the Gunners chief went to Finland for the Under-17 World Cup in 2003, where Spain's Fab won the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament awards.
Arsenal then signed Fabregas on September 11 that year, luring him with the promise of first-team football.
But they had to pay £700,000 compensation after Barcelona asked FIFA to arbitrate"

Looks like the Transfermarkt figure lowyatter posted is wrong, since quite a few other sites also show the £700,000.

Still, the point remains that Arsenal did pay for the transfer in '03.

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Added on February 26, 2011, 9:35 amThis site also shows the 700,000 figure

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/426180-...easy-if-you-try

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Added on February 26, 2011, 9:39 amthis one as well:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/...ral-Harper.html


This post has been edited by jwrx: Feb 26 2011, 09:39 AM