Arsenal & Man Utd defend their youth transfer policy

They may be at daggers drawn on the football pitch, but Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson both robustly defended their transfer policies yesterday in the face of the growing scandal about Premier League clubs poaching young talent from lesser European and domestic sides.

The Arsenal manager, who has a solid reputation in the game for developing youngsters at the club's academy, said yesterday that a proposed ban on international transfers below the age of 18 - as proposed by Uefa and Fifa presidents Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter - would be damaging for the whole of the professional sport.

"Look at the alternative," he told the Guardian. "If you ban players from moving before the age of 18, you know what will happen? The player will be sold anyway. To whom? To agents. At what age? At 13, 14. Where will they go? Not to top-level clubs with top-level education. They will go to clubs who have been bought by business people, of a very low level, and will stay there until the age of 18 waiting to be sold. The money will go out of the game.

"If a player goes to Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, it is all clean and he gets a good education. That is why I am very sharp on cases like that. We have to respect the rules that are in place."

Meanwhile Manchester United's manager claimed that the animus behind the current controversy, which has seen the Old Trafford club accused by French side Le Havre and Serie A's Fiorentina of illegally inducing talent from them, came from envy: "We are good at [scouting young talent] and, obviously, it rankles with a lot of people," said Alex Ferguson.

"[Other clubs] are always going to bring Manchester United into it because we are the biggest club, but they do it without any foundation, or knowledge about the situation whatsoever," Ferguson said. "There are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, but I can assure you that Manchester United behave absolutely correctly in all their dealings with young players and their parents."

Manchester United are accused of having paid the estranged parents of Le Havre's Paul Pogba (above, centre) more than £170,000 to seal the 16-year-old's move to Old Trafford, but Ferguson dismissed the idea that the club engages in this practice: "It would be crazy to contemplate [paying parents] because it would be the biggest headache you could ever have."

Both Platini and Blatter have made very public commitments to doing something about youth transfers, a practice that in the past they have somewhat injudiciously likened to "child slavery" and "child trafficking".