Tapping up: What it is, does it still exist and the nuances of enforcing it

June 08, 2024

The first production of Shooting Star, a comic theatre production by the playwright Basil Thomas, was in 1949.

It was about English football and the transfer market and was later adapted for television and a 1953 feature film called The Great Game, in which the chairman of a club struggling in the relegation zone was trying to sign a promising player from a rival team.

The dramatic tension and comedy of the film come from chairman Joe Lawson, wining, dining and convincing the young player to sign for Burnville United, a fictional team that played at Brentford’s old Griffin Park stadium, without eliciting the attention of the authorities. Shooting Star/The Great Game is a story centred on the transfer market taboo of tapping up — where a club attempts to persuade a player to sign for them without the official consent of the team the player is contracted to.

Fast forward 52 years and Chelsea were punished with hefty fines when details of a hotel meeting between then-Arsenal player Ashley Cole, his agent Jonathan Barnett and Chelsea representatives Jose Mourinho and Peter Kenyon became known.

Cole and Barnett were fined £100,000 for the illicit meeting, with the agent having his licence revoked for 18 months, nine of which were suspended. Mourinho was handed an initial fine of £200,000. Chelsea were fined £300,000 and handed a suspended three-point deduction. After an appeal, Cole and Mourinho’s fines were reduced to £75,000.

Tapping up is considered one of the more significant business infractions a club can make. If a club is reported and found guilty of the activity, they can be handed financial punishments or even transfer window bans. The Premier League rulebook is clear on what does and does not constitute proper behaviour when signing players. Rule T.1.2 explains that “a contracted player, either by himself or by any person on his behalf, shall not either directly or indirectly make any such approach as is referred to in Rule T.5 without having obtained the prior written consent of his club”.

Rule T.6 makes it clear that agents cannot advertise their players to prospective clubs “without having obtained the prior written consent of his (the player’s current) club”.

If you are wondering why football managers do not name individual players when asked about possible transfers, that is because of Rule T.8, which states “a statement made publicly by or on behalf of a club expressing interest in acquiring the registration of a contract player or by a contract player expressing interest in transferring his registration to another club shall, in either case, be treated as an indirect approach”.

Yet in the modern era, tapping up no longer appears to be a footballing taboo, but a somewhat-accepted and partially well-established part of transfer negotiations.

“I don’t know what it is or isn’t any more. You will struggle to find someone who knows what the definition of tapping up is because everyone just does it,” says one football agent, speaking to The Athletic on condition of anonymity.

In the age of the instant messaging of WhatsApp and video conversations, representatives do not have to converge in hotel lobbies to agree personal details before the buying club submits an official bid.

“I would say the line now is when you are speaking to the player directly,” says the agent. “The moment the interested party is talking directly to the player without the other club’s knowledge is when it has crossed a line. All the time they are talking to the agent, I would say that’s fair.”

Issues that may have been considered tapping up 20 or 30 years ago have now become accepted parts of the business cycle. So long as clubs are cordial, it seems that nowadays it’s accepted that they can approach players without the express written consent of their counterparts. Tapping up still exists in the rulebook, but it is now up to the discretion of managers, clubs and agents as to how far they want to push the issue.

While some rules of the transfer market have been relegated to gentlemen’s agreements, others remain fiercely respected. There is one red line that is not meant to be crossed — buying clubs cannot approach players or their representatives to learn the exact figures of any release clauses.

Fulham’s director of club operations, Tony Khan, was quick to rebuff any claims that the defensive midfielder Joao Palhinha had a release clause in his contract after reports linked him to West Ham United.

There is no release clause. https://t.co/DIY8t1LQCR

— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) June 10, 2023

Release clauses have a knock-on effect on players in Germany or Spain. Conversations around personal agreements are much more relaxed when involving players from those leagues as details involving their release clauses are available to the public.

In 2021, Chelsea and Liverpool found it easier to approach RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner as they knew the transfer fee to secure his services.

Release clauses are not always a guarantee of a sale. John W Henry once said “apparently these contracts don’t seem to hold” when rebuffing Arsenal’s £40million + £1 bid for Luis Suarez, and several found in La Liga contracts are made to be deliberately and prohibitively expensive — Barcelona’s Ansu Fati and Pedri have €1billion (£846million) clauses.

Still, prospective buyers can, in theory, tread on firmer ground when looking to agree personal terms with players that have widely known release clauses.

Tapping up is not exclusive to football transfers. Basketball has attempted to crack down on tampering — a similar practice where teams and agents attempt to agree deals before the opening of the trade window.

In 2021, the NBA investigated possible tampering violations involving Kyle Lowry’s sign-and-trade deals to the Miami Heat and Lonzo Ball’s to the Chicago Bulls. Both deals were completed when Lowry and Ball were free agents, but the speed of their announcements after the free agency window began suggested there was contact made between relevant representatives before an approved time.

Lonzo Ball, centre (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports)

Investigations into instances of tampering from the New York Knicks, Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers resulted in relatively mild punishments, with each team losing second-round draft picks.

Basketball, like football, finds it difficult to crack down on instances where players attempt to organise possible transfers/trades among themselves while on international duty. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant are thought to have co-ordinated their trades to the Brooklyn Nets while on Team USA duty, not unlike Barcelona’s players trying to convince Cesc Fabregas to leave Arsenal during the 2010 World Cup.

If a football club believes one of its players is being tapped up, they can report it to the authorities. However, most clubs now see this as a last resort and prefer to warn each other when they believe transfer activity moves past an agreed acceptable threshold. The rare reported cases are now saved for events where contact between a player and a prospective club is deemed too loud and damaging to the selling club. In June 2017, Southampton reported Liverpool to the Premier League for an illegal approach to Virgil van Dijk.

“Liverpool had done it to a point where no other club would be interested in taking him because it was so obvious and public that the only club he wanted to join was them,” says the agent. “It is a dangerous game to play at times because if you don’t get the move you want and you have been so public about only going to one club, then you quickly run out of options.”

Liverpool apologised for their behaviour before signing the Dutchman in the following January window. Southampton fans have held particular ire towards Van Dijk whenever he’s returned to St Mary’s, believing Liverpool’s approach to be so distracting that the centre-back’s form dropped in the first half of the 2017-18 season.

At the conclusion of The Great Game, Lawson is caught by the FA for his attempts to tap up a player and is suspended from all football activities. Cole and Chelsea may have been fined in 2005, but the left-back had a glittering career at Stamford Bridge.

In 2023, agreeing personal terms before bidding is now an established part of the game. Or, to paraphrase a basketball saying: “If you’re not tapping up, you’re not trying hard enough.”

(Top photo: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k29pa2liaHxzfJFsZmlvX2WAcMPHmqtmoJGlvaa6xJ1kraddqa6xvMinnmatoGQ%3D