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The Liverpool "tapping-up scandal was dramatically reignited" on Tuesday after the club was accused of submitting a "falsified" document to the Premier League when "trying to lure a 12-year-old schoolboy from Stoke City," according to Ben Rumsby of the London TELEGRAPH. The club is "facing imminent legal action" from the unnamed boy, now 13, and his family, having "failed to make amends for leaving both him unable to play academy football and his parents in thousands of pounds of debt" more than three months after reports first revealed their plight. Compounding the "litany of transgressions" over which Liverpool became the first club to be punished under new Premier League rules -- and the lengths to which it was "allegedly prepared to go to conceal them" -- Liverpool has now been "publicly accused of altering the date of a signature on his academy player registration application." The father and son completed the document on Sept. 2 last year, "three days before the latter began the new school year at his private school, the fees for which Liverpool had agreed to pay until he was 16." The club directed the pair not to date their signatures, "an instruction the father ignored to ensure the moment was accurately recorded." The next time the family saw the document -- after it had been submitted to the Premier League -- all the signatures on it were dated Sept. 21, "including the father’s, beneath which a ‘1’ had been inserted after his initial ‘2’" (
TELEGRAPH, 7/11).
