Harry Clarke, the scorer of the U14s' Barcelona-esque goal which went viral at the start of last season has joined Arsenal’s Academy.

Clarke added the final touch to the 13-pass goal scored against Millwall which has now received more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Having started training with the Gunners earlier in the month, Clarke scored on his debut for Arsenal’s U15s as they beat AFC Bournemouth 3-0 last week.

Clarke, 14, is the younger brother of striker George Clarke, who was with the Town Academy during 2013/14.

Photo: Action Images

Garv added 11:20 - Aug 28 Clubs buy players that age?
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topguy added 11:20 - Aug 28 Quite right, we prob didn't want to let him go, but as cat1 they can really plunder the best young talent from lower cat, that's why I presume they keep moving the goal posts when it comes to us getting cat1 bk, less lower cat clubs for the top teams to plunder. as people go on about city and utd academy, if they were better than ours why do they not bring through as many, they let cat2 do all the hard work till about 15 then swoop in and say he came through the system.

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Michael11 added 11:40 - Aug 28 Good luck to the boy but I'm actually annoyed at this. It's exactly why we need Category 1 status. If he turns out to be the next Oxlade, Fabregas, Walcott etc then £100k isn't going to be a great deal.
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Kesgraveblue57 added 12:24 - Aug 28 Good luck to Harry but buying and selling a boy of 14 seems wrong to me but that's what done today
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parhamblue added 12:56 - Aug 28 Comments from those who think they know, not helping. It looks like the money is ad hoc compensation agreed between the two clubs as he is too young to sign a professional contract. It may be that to get the money, my club had to terminate his registration. Not happy!
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ipswichjon added 15:24 - Aug 28 The fee is set by the EPPP system, ITFC have no say in this, it's worked out by the time the player has spent at the club, I think £100,000 is an arbitary figure for this story, if he's been in our academy since the age of 9 we'd get around £68,000 (figures do vary a bit) and then there are further fixed fees that equate to £100,000-150,000 for every 10 EPL appearances up to a maximum of about £1.3M. There are small percentage clauses automatically added on to future sales, these haven't been confirmed but most estimates put them between 2.5% and 5% of future fees.

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Wallingford_Boy added 22:52 - Aug 28 What are you lot on about?! Where has this £100k come from? There is no fee as there is no contract!! He is 14!!!!!
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itfctilidie added 23:57 - Aug 28 What are you all talking about? No mention of any fee, is this just something someone has made up and everyone else has gone with
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itfcjoe added 14:30 - Jan 16 I think by the time January 2023 rolls around he'll be ready for our first team and we should sign him back for £1m to compete with Donacien
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