With all the fuss over Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid isn’t it time to rethink the way the transfer market works?
Real have obviously sounded out the player and his agent before launching their Marca led media offensive for the player. Ronaldo, if he wanted, could kill the whole thing stone dead by categorically committing his future, for next season at least, to United. He has failed to do so and the whole thing rumbles on. United’s ire is understandable but Ferguson can hardly claim the higher ground on this one with cases like Stam and van Nistelrooy under his belt.
But what Madrid are doing is no different to what clubs all across Europe are doing right now. Agents are being contacted to see if their player would be agreeable to a move to a certain club, perhaps certain things will be offered, and then the club will approach the player’s club to make an offer. It’s just on a smaller scale.
We’ve seen high profile cases in the past - Patrick Vieira courted constantly by Real Madrid, Thierry Henry by Barcelona, Steven Gerrard by Chelsea and so on. Clubs talk about reporting the offenders to FIFA but nothing is ever done. Things continue the same way all the time.
So what can we do about it? Either accept this is the way things work or implement new measures to try and give clubs some control over the players. With the Bosman rule and the Webster clause the transfer market is going through a serious upheaval. No longer can a club say ‘You’re under contract, you’re not leaving’, as players can now buy out their deals. At some point a high profile Webster case will happen and that will open the floodgates.
The behaviour of agents won’t change, they’ll still strive to make as much money as possible for their client (and themselves), often at the expense of the footballing side of a player’s career. Kudos to the agent of Steve Sidwell who ensured his client got a £52,000 a week deal at Chelsea last summer. But then a player who was being spoken about as a possible international started only a handful of games and his career has gone backwards while he’s gotten richer.
I’m not quite sure what the point I’m trying to make is. It might be that the transfer market is fucked up anyway and there’s not much we can do to fix it. Unless clubs have real evidence that their player has been tapped up, and that would require the player and his agent to confirm it as the other club certainly won’t, nothing can be done about it.
Is there any way to make agents behave like decent people? Is there any way of stopping a player wanting to leave a club when he’s being offered three times as much money elsewhere? Is loyalty a thing of the past or does it require purchasing these days?
Your thoughts are very welcome.
