Chances are you haven’t have heard about Erik Lamela, soccer’s new superstar. Don’t feel bad about that, he’s only 12 years old … but with superstar potential, you understand.

At least, that’s what the Spanish club FC Barcelona thinks, and they’ve offered the kid’s parents a four-year contract worth $150,000 a year. There is an irritating hitch to Barca’s plans, however. Lamela is Argentine; he and his family live in Buenos Aires, where he plays in River Plate’s youth division.

The problem that will be solved by Barca simply spending a bit more money: They will find a job for Erik’s father, and move the whole family to Spain. And River Plate – the club that discovered the kid and has been training him up until now – what do they get out of the deal? Nothing. They’re up in arms about that, naturally: “River won’t let this go,” said the River President Jose Maria Aguilar. “It’s player piracy and we do not accept it.”

To which Barca replied, a little too cleverly, that there is no question of paying a transfer fee to River because Erik is still a minor, not yet a professional.

River may well feel aggrieved, but they’re not on firm ground here. The moneybag European clubs have the upper hand. They are greatly helped by the activities of South American player agents, who sign up youngsters – sometimes even whole youth teams – hoping that one or two of them will be good enough to set up a lucrative deal with a European club.

A question of basic economics. The young players usually come from poor families. The money offered by the agents is paltry when set alongside the tens of millions paid for adult stars, yet even the mere hint of future stardom is sometimes enough to persuade a boy’s parents to sign up.

If a European club does show interest, its money is a fortune for the parents. The boy’s dreams are kindled, the agent pockets his fees, and the Europeans have paid a knock-down price for a player whose value, in six or seven years time, may have soared into the multimillion-dollar range.

Everyone is happy – except the boy’s original club. Argentine law mentions nothing about transactions like this, leaving the decision – no doubt correctly – to the parents. But in the case of Erik Lamela, there is another recourse for River. Says Aguilar: “If we don’t get a satisfactory outcome, we will contact FIFA. What they [Barca] are doing is against the regulations.”

Correct. Pele launched a warning about the traffic in young players back in 2000: “In Brazil, Argentina, and Africa it is most dangerous. It is like slave ownership. It is really high time to think seriously about these things.”

FIFA took action the following year with a regulation banning the international transfer of players below the age of 18. Titled “Protection of Minors,” the ruling was a response to the growing number of cases involving boys as young as 13 who had been lured to Europe with promises of fame and fortune.

The luring was generally done by unofficial agents who were not licensed by FIFA. In one case, 17 Brazilian teenagers were required to sign 10-year contracts, and then flown to an “International Football School” in Poland, where they were to be prepared for trials with pro clubs, without any guarantees that they would be signed. Similar cases were cropping up in Belgium, Spain, and Italy.

When things did not go well for the boys, they were often left to shift for themselves. In the Spanish sports daily AS, columnist Alfredo Relano drew a grim picture: “They will become rent boys in a park, low level delinquents, minor drug traffickers – prison fodder anyway.”

A specific clause in the FIFA regulation dealt with attempts to move an entire family. If the move is linked to the boy’s soccer talent – as is clearly the case with Barca and the Lamelas – then FIFA will refuse to allow the player to play in any official games. Which means, in effect, that the boy will not be much use to the club until he reaches age 18. By that time his development will have been severely hindered by the lack of serious game experience.

But FIFA has yet to show any teeth on this matter. It immediately ran into problems within Europe, where the ban was in obvious conflict with the free movement of labor within the community.

Last year, England’s Arsenal was involved in a case of flagrant player-poaching – and this time it was Barcelona that felt cheated. Barca had discovered and nurtured Francesc Fabregas and had him under contract as a 16-year-old amateur, but before he could legally sign a pro contract, Arsenal swooped.

This was not the first time that Arsenal, under their French coach Arsene Wenger, had whisked teenage players away without compensating their continental clubs. In 1998 Arsenal snatched Nicolas Anelka from Paris St. Germain, and in 2000 it infuriated another French club, Nimes, by signing its young star Guy Demel. “This is not a transfer, it’s a kidnaping,” complained the Nimes director Pierre Mosca.

FIFA’s ban has proved powerless to prevent such raiding from continuing – though a scheme of compensation for the aggrieved clubs is being worked out. But even when the poaching involves clubs outside Europe and is not subject to E.U. laws, FIFA’s regulation is of doubtful validity.

Can FIFA really ban a promising player from receiving money and top-class training? How can FIFA stop a family deciding what is best for their son?

I put this to a top FIFA official in 2001, adding that in such cases FIFA would probably get sued. “Let them go to court, we will oppose them in court,” was the answer I got.

So far it hasn’t come to that. I doubt that it will. The only parties likely to go to court are the rich European clubs, the only ones who can afford it. But probably they will use their money in another way.

FIFA has yet to be heard from in the Lamela case. It seems quite likely that Barcelona will end up compensating River – what Aguilar referred to as “a satisfactory outcome” – and the FIFA regulation will not be applied. Possibly that is the sensible outcome where major clubs are involved; the main aim of the regulation anyway was to stamp out the abuse practiced by shady “agents” and their wholesale importation of underage boys. It has unquestionably had a positive effect in that area, if only by drawing attention to the scandal – both in Europe and in the exploited countries.