How City fought bitter battle to sign teen who never delivered

AT just 16-years-old, with the prospect of a life-changing move to the Premier League, Karim Karim Rekik instead found himself at the centre of a bitter legal battle between boyhood club Feyenoord and future club City.

- JOE BRAY

"In most cases these moves do not work out, especially for the boy himself," said Feyenoord general manager Eric Gudde back in 2011 when City came calling. "When they go abroad they are just 16 and it all seems great but if you look at the statistics the majority end in huge disappointment for the player.

"He can get a big foreign club, but he never gets in the first-team and is then released and returns, several years later to the Netherlands."

It was hardly the stance of a club doing all they could to make a player feel wanted so they spurn the advances of the bright lights of the Premier League.

But when centre-back Rekik was thought to have signed a deal with City before he could sign a professional contract at Feyenoord, the Dutch club went on the offensive frustrated at Rekik joining a long list of players moving to the Premier League and denying them proper compensation. Future City defender Nathan Ake was another to move to England as a teenager.

Feyenoord asked the Dutch FA to look into City's signing of Rekik, with Gudde saying: "These lads are so young and the stats are clear: most of these adventures fail.

"Most of these kids are badly developed and then they're out on loan and they come back here, to actually have lost progress.