The club will just have to make do with Suarez, Neymar, Xavi
That sound you can hear is a rather large laugh coming from Madrid as Barcelona’s appeal against a transfer ban has been thrown out by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
FIFA handed down a ban to the club for two transfer windows after being found guilty of signing underage players from Europe.
The club appealed but the CAS today has said that there is no reason for the ban to be overturned.
The statement says ‘The panel found in particular that FC Barcelona had breached the rules regarding the protection of minors and the registration of minors attending football academies. ‘The Fifa decision is confirmed in full and the sanction remains in force.”
It’s not like the club will be too stuck and they managed to sign Suarez, Ivan Rakitic, Alen Halilovic before the penalty was properly imposed.
Barcelona have now issued a statement of their own claiming that they will seek further action to have the ban reversed and the opeing line is a zinger, ‘With all respect for the sports authorities, the Club has expressed its utter nonconformity with the resolution’.
The fairly angry response to this morning’s announcement goes on to state the club ‘totally disagrees with the verdict of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced today to confirm the sanction originally imposed by FIFA as a consequence of the alleged breach of regulations on the international transfer of minor footballers’
The statement goes on to say that they club are very aware of their responsibilities to young players  and how they are schooled and educated.
They claim that any errors are of an ‘administrative nature and to a large extent have been caused by the existing conflict between the FIFA regulations and Spanish legislation,’
Sounds a bit like FR.Ted’s ‘the money was only resting in my account’ excuse.
H.T to BarcelonaÂ
