Fred Terminates His Lyon Contract

By: Inara | February 26th, 2009

Break out the party hats and start celebrating!

Fred, who is currently suntanning in Brazil, has decided never to return to Lyon. He’s terminated his contract and is now free to sign with Fluminense. His decision has been made official by Lyon. This certainly can’t be a surprise to anyone – he hasn’t been selected for the first team since December and has been limited to one or two appearances on Lyon’s CFA team (he apparently cleared out his locker several weeks back).

Fred way back in ancient times.

While I’m mostly happy, I do feel a few pangs of regret. When on form, he was a great striker and scored some truly memorable goals. And at least during his first two years at the club (back when he was mentally stable), he was a happy presence in the locker room and loved by the players and fans alike.

But his recent behavior has exposed the man he’s become, which is a petty, money hungry player making demands that he doesn’t deserve. You can read about his many personality defects here. As for his monetary complaints, I’ll explain further.

As most of you know, Fred backtracked on his word and decided to leave in the winter. Lyon were okay with this because this meant that they could get at least a nominal transfer fee, and it would also give them the opportunity to recruit a new striker. But Fred turned down interest from Roma, Werder Bremen, and Valencia, as well as concrete offers from Stoke City and several Brazilian clubs because he wanted to be in a competitive team in Europe that would also pay him a lot of money. That left Tottenham, but even then, he couldn’t agree on wages with them. Finally Tottenham agreed to negotiate further and set up another meeting…but Fred never showed up! And since that was in the last few days of the transfer window, that it was for a January departure.

Fred still wanted to leave, and with Puel no longer even wanting him around, Lyon agreed to end his contract. But then in early February, Fred’s brother accused Lyon of withholding certain bonuses, which he claimed was the reason for the hold up. I already wrote about that here, but to recap, Lyon pointed out that Fred himself agreed to forgo those bonuses in exchange for giving him to Fluminense without demanding a transfer fee.

Fred in the present.

Having been pushed around for so long by the Brazilian diva, Lyon refused to budge on this matter. Finally, it looked like things had been resolved last weekend, and Lyon agreed to terminate his contract. But then, Fred failed to show up to sign the papers. This really really pissed off Aulas, who also accused Fred of mistreating his own wife (read about his family issues here).

Now, I’m not sure how it works when it comes to contract termination, though I imagine a great deal of it has to do with who is doing the terminating. Each contract has stipulations in them that should a contract be terminated, the disadvantaged party will receive some amount of compensation. It’s why Fred’s termination has been taking so long – Fred wanted to receive compensation despite the fact that it was he who was trying to leave (technically, he wanted his “bonuses”). Now that Fred has terminated his contract so abruptly, he must have decided to give up on that extra money he was hoping for from OL. We’ll just have to wait for further details on what transpired.

What we do know is that we will never see Fred in a Lyon jersey again. Of course this leaves Lyon in a very vulnerable position. They are short of one striker and still have a long and arduous campaign ahead of them. But at least they are free of the ~drama~.

And just to prove that I’m not entirely a hateful person, here is a clip of Fred’s most famous goal at Lyon. I’ll do my best to remember him for that instead of all the crap he’s pulled in the last two years.

LYON 4 – PSV 0 : FRED
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