Tapping-up

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tapping-up generally refers to an approach by one football club to a player under contract to another club without that other club's knowledge or permission. This kind of approach is often made through the player's agent. The aim is to unsettle the player and facilitate the transfer of the player and, in turn, result in a handsome sum for the agent. It is expressly forbidden in many professional football leagues.

A milder form of "tapping-up" involves a manager's letting his admiration for a player at another club become known, perhaps by hinting at his interest while working as a pundit on a game the player is taking part in, "he's the sort of player any manager would be very keen to sign", or by lavishing praise in programme-notes when the two teams meet. There are also the "source close to the manager"-type newspaper rumours which in many case originate within the club and are intended to flag an interest while retaining plausible deniability against charges of tapping-up. Most ex-players candidly admit that tapping-up has gone on in football for decades. As Brian Clough once said, "we [Nottingham Forest] tapped more players than the Severn-Trent water board!" [1]

Notorious examples of tapping-up in the Premier League include Dwight Yorke and Ashley Cole. In both cases, the incidents soured the relationship between the player and his original club. Cole was found guilty and fined £100,000 by the Premier League on 2 June 2005 for a meeting in a hotel in January 2005 between himself, the Chelsea manager José Mourinho, Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and his agent Jonathan Barnett.[2]

Tapping-up is similar to the North American practice of "tampering."