Manchester City are not losing hope on signing the Iraqi star Nashat Akram. The blues might have failed to convince the Home Secretary and have had one application and two appeals rejected but as The Manchester Evening News reports, City are all out to gain the service of the player in the summer.
The problem with Akram working in the UK is his nationality. Iraq are ranked just outside the top 70 footballing nations in the world by FIFA and the UK rules are that any foreign footballer trying to get a work permit has to come from a nation that has ranked inside the top 70 nations.
But Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East is confident that the Home Secretariat will be convinced in the end:
I shall be calling on the Home Secretary to review this decision. Here we have someone who wants to come and work legitimately, and whose presence here can heal divisions in Iraq. Parliament has given Ministers the right to exercise their discretion and they should use it. This case sends out all the wrong messages.
Now political figures are shoving their way into the equation. What ought to have been a simple transfer is set to rumble into the deeper end of the political jungle.