Good Morning RFI Members,
Some of you may have seen our announcement on social media about the former RFI player, Noah Ryan, who was recently offered a position to join the Segunda Division Spanish club Albacete Balompié.

This remarkable achievement is a unique case, in terms of an Australian player signing for a professional European club academy. A number of RFI parents have asked about how this came to be, so I would like to share with you why this is such an achievement.

First, a bit about the story.

Noah joined RFI in 2015 and spent three years in our development program. In 2018, he moved to Green Gully SC with many his RFI teammates and myself as Coach.

In early 2018, the Ryan family travelled on vacation to Europe. For three weeks the family spent time in Spain where Carlos Drechsler (our RFI Founder) had organised experiences for their three boys with Spanish clubs. Noah’s brothers trained at R.C.D. Carabanchel in Madrid and Noah trained at Albacete Balompié.

Albacete Balompié is a professional club in the second division in Spain that was very nearly promoted to the first division (La Liga Santander) last season.

These were not trials, just experiences to train within their teams to get a feel for how football life in Spain is.

Noah trained for 3 weeks with the Infantiles A (The strongest group of U12-13 in the club). By the end of the experience, the coach reported that Noah’s performance had impressed him to the point of strongly believing that he was well within the top 16 players in the squad. This prompted the club to speak to Carlos and ask if he believed that Noah would be interested in signing for the team in the following season.

The offer was for a full scholarship. Noah’s family will not pay a cent to Albacete for this. Albacete will invest in Noah, as a promising player and absorb the costs of his development, like all serious professional clubs do.

After much consideration and planning, The Ryan family and Noah decided to take up the offer to join Albacete, and Noah is now moving to Spain.

Now, why this is so important and unique?

Firstly, signing foreign minors in an European club is banned by FIFA. FIFA regulations state, in article 19 Protection of minors, that for a foreign minor to be registered for a European club, the child must be a regular migrant (the parents moved to the city for reasons unrelated to football, and must demonstrate this to FIFA) as the key exception to the rule. You can find the full FIFA regulations here. https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/regulations_on_the_status_and_transfer_of_players_en_33410.pdf

This piece of regulation is widely unknown in Australia and is conveniently not promoted by individuals whose business is to charge Australian families for the privilege of training with overseas clubs. There are 2 key implications for aspiring Australian footballers:

1. No Australian players under the age of 18 are in fact signing for any reputable professional clubs in Europe. After the big punishments and fines given to Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester City and many more, professional clubs just don’t take risks. If they were going to take such risks, they’d only do it for a National Team Brazilian or Argentinian players worth the trouble.

2. Any young Australian players (or agents/academies) claiming that they are signing for a European club are in fact either signing for a weak, unknown club or football school below FIFA’s radar, meaning FIFA will not bother chasing them. This means that the player is paying to be registered there (the club does not invest) which is far from an achievement. Many players are also simply paying to train with a team in a higher reputation club, but will not be signed. Either way, the player pays, which means it’s not really serious in the professional football world.

So how can Albacete sign Noah? Albacete has a unique opportunity to benefit from a geographic and demographic legislation loophole. It sits in the region of Castilla La Mancha, where it is the only professional football club. Due to the region having a relatively low population density, the Football Federation, which is governed by FIFA, does not handle their registrations.

Their registrations are handled instead by a government body that overrides the FIFA regulations and states that all children under 16 living in the region must have direct access to sports. This is an absolutely unique case in the entire country and more than likely most of Europe. This means that Albacete is able to bring in international youth players and was therefore able to offer Noah a position.

The reason that I wanted to share this with you, is that it is important to know that if you hear that an Australian player under the age of 18 is playing for a top club in Europe, other than in this case that I just shared, it may be far from the truth.

The only way this could happen is if a player was paying for some training in the club academy. They would play friendly games or tournaments, not registered by the nation’s federation. The exception is the rare case of the player being an European citizen and their parents transferring the legal guardian rights to a local family.

In these cases, due to clubs not being able to derive a competitive benefit from having a player, they would almost certainly seek economic benefit. You will hear tales of other players going overseas and while this is no doubt a brave, challenging experience, it does not compare with what Noah has achieved. He may well be the ONLY Australian player under the age of 18 currently signed by a professional club in Europe.

Needless to say, Carlos, our RFI coaches and I are so proud of him and wish him every success.