Mark Goddard, the GM of FIFA's Transfer Matching System, has defended the 2015 transfer ban for Barcelona.

Barcelona was punished for failing to correctly register 10 underage players with FIFA, an obligatory requirement on all clubs.

According to Goddard the clubs are required to file a digital dossier on the under-age players, which Barcelona didn't do, meaning these players "were not in the system."

"The question is: where do these players who weren't registered come from?" he said.

Goddard also said he had no idea if the players involved were still at the club, but warned that what was certain is that they are "prohibited from playing".

"I also don't know if Barcelona are trying to legalise the situation. It's up to them now what steps they want to take". He said that where the club did wish to legalise the situation of the players each case would be different and could take a different amount of time, depending on the "documentation required".