If this isn’t overturned, however, the transfer market would explode. I mean I could understand if the both the club and the player agreed to the buy-out, YES. But for C. Ronaldo to just walk into United and hand them 10 million pounds and signed with Madrid for nothing is utterly ridiculous. That alone would probably force CAS and FIFA to re-think their idiocy.

I guess it’s hard to say what affects this will have on the club side of things because the process of offering new contracts won’t change. But I’m afraid that it will make things easier for players to leave. Jan, you and I follow leagues that are less cash strapped, and we both know that eventually, money smells awfully good. So say a club signs a promising player to a four year contract and lures him with as high wages as they can afford. The player accepts, but then the following year, he buys out the rest of his contract with money probably covered by the club that wants to buy him. So essentially, small clubs won’t be able to keep good players more than a year, at best two. So I guess that’s what has me worried. At least right now you can bully a player into staying an extra year (what Lyon did with Abidal after the WC), but now they can’t even do that.

Anyway whatever the system, the big guns will take advantage of it. Unless we forbid transfers and clubs only played with their homegrown players.

E.g. Inara mentioned that Aulaus extended Malouda’s contract six months before he moved to Chelsea. He wouldn’t have done so, if it wasn’t for the Bosman ruling. Hamburg have been trying to get van der Vaart to sign a new and much improved contract to get rid of a €1.5m buyout clause, which kicks in in 2009. van der Vaart decided against higher wages, because he plans to move to a bigger club, and fears that this new contract would have made him too expensive.

This protected time period of three years isn’t any different to a contract which is running out soon or a buyout clause. Clubs will probably make it a habit of handing out three or four year contracts to players and then will approach them after one season, offering them better wages and probably some cash for a new signature, which would reset the protected period. The player then has to decide, whether he wants to play one or two more seasons for less money, just to be cheap for other clubs, or whether he wants higher wages while being more expensive for other clubs.

I think feeder leagues and clubs could still protect their assets this way, or at least safe wages if the players are intend to leave.

Football, like other professional sports, is a business, and these types of rulings make in so much more difficult to run a business and make a profit. Government bodies and courts should realize this before they setup laws or rulings that while helping the individual, will hurt the organization more.

Maybe managers will find some clever ways to circumvent this loophole or FIFA will try and change their transfer laws or it won’t be all that bad or we’re all doomed indeed. Quite a complex situation.:-)

This entire situation is just SO SAD.