Manchester United Shouldn't Cry For Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo seems determined to leave Manchester United for Real Madrid, and despite having signed him to a four year contract less than a year ago, there’s a little United can do to change his mind.

The lesson here, and it is not a new lesson at all, is that contracts in football can only guarantee that the club will get compensation when the player wants to leave. Sir Alex Ferguson could take the example of how his nemesis, Arsene Wenger, lost Ashley Cole in the prime of his Arsenal career.

It is tough on United that they should lose the player they helped develop into one of the best players in the world, but he was 18 when United bought him, and Sir Alex cannot take all the credit for nurturing his talent. If he was an English boy he developed from the age of 14, losing him to Real Madrid would be an injustice that FIFA should be concerned about.

Similarly, FIFA should not show any sympathy if Arsenal were to lose Cesc Fabregas to a foreign club. If that club is Barcelona, Arsenal can hardly complain, after all Fabregas was poached from Barcelona in the first place.

English players for the most part are loyal to their English clubs.  One exception that comes to mind is Ashley Cole, and even then he moved to another English club. Once an English player breaks into a top English side, it is almost impossible for a foreign club to prise him away, with Michael Owen being another exception to the rule.

It seems then that the value of a contract is limited to the transfer fee that a club can obtain once the player wants to leave, and loyalty is not part of the package.

In any case, why should a player be loyal to a club?

Clubs will discard the player once they have no more use for him, and once again there are exceptions. Inter Milan treated Ronaldo and got him through his injury problems before he ditched them for Real Madrid. The bottom line is, football is a business and as they saying goes, “There is no place for sentiment in business.”

With the complaints about too many foreigners in leagues like the EPL, FIFA should not be too concerned about foreign players being poached by foreign clubs. After all, less foreigners is what FIFA wants right?  

At the same time, clubs want to have better protection of their top players. How about offering better protection on contracts of home-grown players, or even lowering protection on contracts of foreign players?

Such a system would encourage clubs to develop local talent and sign fewer foreigners because of the risk of losing them to the next club that will pay them higher wages.

Under such a system, local players will have less bargaining power and probably lower wages, while foreigners will hopefully be fewer and on higher wages to ward off potential bidders.

It might not be fair on the local lads that they are on a tighter leash (and potentially lower wages) at their clubs, but the rationale behind the 6+5 rule and other proposals that will force clubs to pick players on non-merit criteria is that it will benefit local talent.

Local players should be willing to sacrifice high wages early in their careers in order to get more opportunities

Furthermore, the protection on contracts can be the same for local and foreign players over the age of twenty-four, at which stage local players should be expected to compete on merit with their foreign counterparts, without the protection of rules like 6+5.

This article is in line with my previous article on the 6+5 rule. FIFA needs to tackle problems in football holistically and not in isolation, because all the problems in football are interlinked and there are common solutions for many of them.