Abidal Says Goodbye

By: Inara | June 29th, 2007

In a surprise move, Lyon officially announced Eric Abidal’s departure from the club the second he passed his medical at Camp Nou. I wouldn’t be shocked to discover they had Abidal’s departure announcement written up since last October.

Here are the financial details: Abidal will receive a net salary of €2m per year on a four year contract. Lyon will receive €15m, plus an additional €500,000 bonus depending on Barca’s results, €800,000 for being paid in installments, and another €750,000 in other costs. So Lyon will receive up to a total of €17.5m euros.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

In his press conference, Abidal naturally went on about how it was his dream to play for Barcelona as a child and that the Spanish league is his favorite. He’s thrilled to be on a team with Les Bleus teammates Thierry Henry and Lilian Thuram, former Lyon teammate Edmilson, and former Monaco teammates Ludovic Giuly and Rafael Marquez. He also knows Yaya Toure and Ronaldinho from coming across them in Ligue 1, while Samuel Eto’o also knows French. (With so many French speakers at Camp Nou, perhaps we should now say Allez Barca).

In the middle of waxing on about his happiness, Abidal mentioned that he did his best to avoid a repeat of the Essien and Diarra sagas because he spent “three wonderful seasons at Lyon.”

There was also a mini-snipe at Aulas (or compliment, depending on how you read it): “Last year, during the Ribery business, Aulas said that Pape Diouf [Marseille president] should respect the desire of a player who wants to leave. I waited to see whether he would respect those same principles in regards to his own players…It is always difficult to leave l’OL because the chairman is a businessman and does everything in the club’s interests.”

Joan Laporta looks happiest of all.

Now that Abidal has gotten everything he’s wanted from his association with Lyon, I expect he’ll never think of the club again, instead disregarding it as a forgettable stopover on his journey to greatness. That’s what Michael Essien and Mahamadou Diarra did and what Tiago and Florent Malouda will do.

And when the rest of the world see Abidal as we have for the past three years, people will forget that it was Lyon that made him and shaped him. No, when Eric Abidal finally gets the luxury of being noticed on a world wide stage, people will say it was Barcelona that made him world class.

And like always, Lyon will content themselves with the money and their never ending quest to build a competitive team for Europe.