Any of you guys follow soccer at all?

Believe it or not, I do. I really only follow the EPL, for the most part.
I'm a Liverpool fan. I'll shutup now in case no one ever responds to this thread so that I don't waste more time.

You deserve a howl for starting this thread. done. GO LIVERPOOL. Crouch4Life.

ps - stop giving me negative howls, i'm not the one giving them to you sherlock.

BonK wrote:
REDS4Life!

Crouch is a STUD!!!! I also heart Gerrard way too much for my own good. They also got this stud new transfer this season: \"Fernando Torres.\" He's gonna be pretty awesome.

I also like Hyypia, Kuyt, Sissoko, Cisce, and Wally Gonzalez.


P.S. I haven't given anyone any negative Howls since Friday morning... so, it's not me. Sorry.

College Wolf wrote:

He was on loan last year to some French club. Not sure about his contract status for this season and whether he is back on LFC or not. I'll have to check and try to find out on their website.

Well..I am from Germany, so I guess it would not be much to say I was supposed to live and breath soccer. But since I am more into what we call U.S. sports over here, I am mostly interested in the German Bundesliga only. Definitely not the best league in the world...or the most fun to watch. But once you get attached to a team, you don't care how bad they are or how ugly they play (see the Wolves, for example).

But since Soccer is Europe's number one sport...by far...you can't avoid hearing a lot of stuff from the other leagues as well, especially if one of the few German players play there or they are matched up against German teams in one of the European team tournaments.

By the way: The German national soccer team has now kicked the behind of both the national teams of Wales and England in a row, despite missing 11 important players. And the best: We beat England in the last game that was ever played in the legendary old Wembley Stadium, and we were the first to beat them in the new Wembley Stadium as well! In their own living room! Speaking about satisfaction!

By the way: Every guy from England I know, and I know a dozen or so, can't stop telling me that Crouch sucks and they would love having him trown of the national team !

Wow, thanks for the insight Sanyarin... that was pretty interesting.

Crouch definitely does not suck lol! He's one of the funniest/most unique/coolest footballers ever!!!

Reds4Life

P.S. I can't find anything about Cisce anywhere... I'm probably not even spelling his name right for one thing. I assume he either transferred completely to that French club or they extended the loan. Makes me sad...

@ \"Cisce\"
Since I am the guy from Europe and there might finally be one sport on this forum I know a pinch more about than you do, I am happy to help out:

You probably refer to Djibril Cissé, a Frensh forward who was under contract with Liverpool from 2004-2006. He was lend to frensh first league club Olympic Marseille in the summer 2006 and bought by this club this July for 8,9 Million Euros (~12.3 Million $). Cissé chose to leave Liverpool, because he did not see a chance to get back into the rotation.

@ German National Soccer Team
I can't believe it. In a exibition game yesterday againt Romania, which was unbeaten in the last 12 months or so, we fielded not even our second- but only our third-best squad against the best Romania had to offer and still managed to come back from a 1:0 deficit to win the game 1:3. The system German National coach Joachim \"Yogi\" Löw has established works so well...I honestly think they could sub me and my granma in and still beat reigning worldchampion Italy.

If we just finish with a draw next week against Ireland, we will be the first nation to secure the ticket for the nect ECs in Austria/Suisse 2008.

Sanyarin wrote:
Ahhhhhhh crap. I figured that was the case. I really liked watching Cisse (hahahaha thanks for the spelling of his name, btw!) That's a bummer, oh well. (P.S. I have some soccer related \"salary\" questions below.\")

Sanyarin wrote:
Wow... congrats. That's pretty impressive! I hope you are in good physical condition if they sub you in against Italy, because that could be a tough match.


Ok, I've got some salary related questions regarding the sport of soccer. I've only been following for a few years, and definitely do not know anywhere near as much about soccer as I do about other sports. Can you help? If not, don't worry about it.


1) Say a player signs a contract and then transfers to a different club. Does his new club still have to honor his original contract completely?

2) Who get's the transfer fee? Does the owner of the old club get all that money, or does the player get some too?

3) What's the most expensive transfer ever? Was it Shevchenko to Chelsea last year? Something like over 50 million?

4) How many times can you transfer? Once per contract? Once per year? As many times as you want, providing a new club is willing to pay the fees?

If you can help me out, that would be great. Just a few things I've been wondering for a while now.

College Wolf:Oh boy, oh boy! A chance to return at least part of the favor you did me with writing that article about the T-Wolves' financial situation.
The most important thing you have to understand when talking about the european sports enviroment from a financial viewpoint, is that we do not have anything that resembling your intra-organisational systems of rules governing the contractual relations between players, teams and leagues (like the collective bargaining agreement). We had such systems established, basically to protect small market teams from being stripped from all their good players by deep pocketed clubs, but those rules were ruled to be an infringement of the players personal right to choose his profession and place of work and thereby illegal by the European Court of Justice in the famous \"Bosman Ruling\" from 1995 (to be honest, this case was far more complicated than this, but it will do for the moment). That means, that every contract between a team and a player is solely governed by civil law, much like the working contract of me, my younger brother and every other European.

Just like I said before, there is no contractual security for a player until a clause in his individual contract, which is governed by civil law, says so. Nonehteless, from this standpoint contracts are quite similar in the USA and in Europe: Most contracts are guaranteed ones, binding the player to the club which has signed him until the contract expires, turning the player into an unrestricted free agent. If a player wants to change clubs or a club wants to prey a certain player from another (mostly a coincidence, cause who would want to get a player who doesn't want to play for you after all?), someone needs to buy him out of his current contract paying a so called \"transfer fee\".(either the player himself - or in near to every case his new club). Some players have clauses in their contracts that lay down a certain amount for a transfer fee or have negotiated some other opt-out-clause (e.g.: \"Player can always transfer to a Spanish club without need for a transfer fee), but most contracts are fully binding, making the amount of the transfer fee freely negotiable between the parties involved. But since there a no standart contracts for players and they are subject only to \"basic\" civil law, almost every weird opt-out, transfer or similar clause is thinkable, depending on the bargaining power of the parties (clubs, players, agents) at the moment the contract was closed. Nonehteless, I have never heard of any contract featuring a clause that would force the club that snatches a player from another club to take over the original contract of the player as well. Besides, that would be stupid by the player, thinking that if another club was that interested in his services to pay his current club unbelieveable amounts of money, he would also like them to pay him some higher salary than his old club did.

That is why in virtually every case thinkable a tranfer would work like this: The interested club negotiates with the current club a transfer fee (if there was none laid down in the player's contract) to be paid to the current employer. Once the fee is paid, the original contract is terminated amicably by the player and his (now) former club and then the player negotiates and signs a completely new contract with his new club.
Just as stated above, the current club of a player wants to be compensated for the loss of the player, otherwise they won't terminate the binding contract with the player, preventing him to change clubs. Therefore the entire transfer fee goes to the current club, although it has become common in the leagues to give the player an additional handsel for switching teams. But this sum is not part of the transfer fee.

Another thing you have to understand that in most European leagues, with the execption of a few clubs, there is no \"owner\" of a team like in the USA and the teams therefore can not be considered \"franchises\". Based upon a system as old as centuries, most of our clubs are still to be considered \"voluntary associations\", although they pay some of their members to be part of the association. Therefore they usually have a directorate, a manager or secretary (whatever word you would prefer), a treasurer and so on, but there is no owner, because the club is owned by the members of the association, which can be thousands and even millions of commoners like you and me. Therefore, transfer fees go into the capital of the association which are then used to fund benefits for the members, such as gyms and other sporting opportunities.
As far as I know - because most times, the clubs try to keep the exact sums secret: The highest transfer fee ever paid was 72 Million Euros (~100 Million $) when frensh soccer idol Zinedine Zidane was transfered from Juventus Turin to Real Madrid in July 2001.
I guess most of this question is answered by the explanations I made to question 1): It depends on the contract and the clubs involved. If the player likes to change teams and one club is willing to pay what the current club demands, the player can be tranfered as often as thinkable. But it all depends on what the teams negotiate, since every transfer depends on the willigness of the current team to terminate the actual contract (unless the player is a free agent, of course) or on the opt-out-clauses in the player's contract.



I hope this answers your questions. If not or you can think of other ones, I'll be glad to help!

@Sanyarin:

Whoa. Like seriously... whoa dude. That post was AWESOME. Howl for you. You honestly just like quadrupled my knowledge behind the monetary intricacies of soccer. And yes, you answered all my questions... thanks!

I think the thing that was hardest for me to grasp is that in Europe the sports contracts are not like our \"intra-organisational systems of rules governing the contractual relations between players, teams and leagues.\" I guess I just always assumed that's how it was for every league, everywhere. Hmmm, everything is much clearer now after your explanation.

Another thing I didn't know... for some dumb reason I thought the transfer fee was just some arbitrary dollar amount for the ability to transfer the still existing previous contract to the new club. Man, I'm dumb. That totally makes sense that the \"transfer fee\" is essentially just \"Buying-out\" a contract, much like in the NBA. (However it happens waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more often in soccer.) Haha I guess I just thought they picked a \"transfer fee\" amount based on how good the player was or something lol.

That makes sense that the current club owner/association or whatever (like you explained below) gets all the transfer fee. I thought maybe the player got some of it, because I didn't previously know that they negiotiated a new contract with the new team. That's cool though that sometimes the transfer fee goes into providing new infrastructure for people.

Wow. A $100 million fee just to bring a player to the team, and then they had to pay him a new contract ON TOP of that. WOW. That's insane.


Well, thanks very much for all the info. That was very helpful, I appreciated it!

@ College Wolf:
I am glad that I could help! But I do not think you should be to harsh with yourself. One thing that I have learned and I have mentioned a few times in this forum already is that you can - to a certain extend - only try to understand things with from your own \"horizon\" which is defined by the experiences one has made so far. And since you have so far only experienced the methods you use to organise sports, you just cant do different as to try to fit the few things you hear about our ways into the systems you know.

Maybe that was the greatest of experiences I made when I came to the USA: That there are always so many different ways to solve the same problem and even if someone is as cultural similar to yourself as thinkable, he might have thought of a completely different solution, you would never have even dreamed of.

But that is why contact with people from even slightly diffenrent social cultures is that interesting: Their different horizon of experiences always lets them see things differently and by listening to their opinions, you learn things you would never would have been able to think of yourself.


But I would also like to add an additional information to your question 4, I wanted to write down but somehow forgot:

Although a player can transfer between different clubs as often as he likes, there is a rule still in power that prevents teams of loosing their players in the middle of the season: To prevent this, we use \"transfer periods\" which somehow work much like your trade deadline. A player under contract can be dealt as often as thinkable, but only in at a certain time (usually one month in Summer- and one in Wintertime; for instance: The period in Summer usually goes from the 1st to the 31th of August).

This is my first post on this forum, and since living in Denmark, I too know a thing or two about soccer. I mostly follow the Danish league, Superligaen, where I am a big fan of FC Copenhagen. But I have a great interest in the English Premiership as well. I've been supporting Leeds United for quite some time. Unfortunately, they are now playing in League One, which is only the third best league in England. A bit of a pity, since they were in the Champions League semifinals six years ago. Almost the same situation the T-Wolves are in now

And for your post Sanyarin, another rule is, and I don't remember if you wrote it, but a player can only be under contract with two clubs in each calendar year.

And for you Liverpool-fans out there. Liverpool has a Danish defender in their squad, called Daniel Agger. He is one of the biggest stars on our national team, and is in Liverpool's starting formation almost every game.

We are proud of our Danes

Zonker wrote:
Awesome. I'm soooo excited that we've now got TWO other bigtime soccer fans on this Wolves board. That's really cool.

Now I have double the amount of people to help answer my really stupid soccer questions as the season continues on. Haha oh boy.

Thanks for letting me know that a player can only be under contract with two teams in a calendar year. That's good to know.

Agger is the man. I like his game. I had Setenta sports last season and watched almost every Liverpool game on Satellite TV, which was waaaaay awesome.

Lastly, what do you guys know about the new Liverpool FC transfer, Fernando Torres? It looks like he has been doing pretty good so far. Is he the real deal? Why did Madrid let him go?

Yeah, that must be mine to answer. The third european team I support is Atletico Madrid, Torres' former club.

Torres has been Atletico's wonder boy since he was 17, and he has basically carried the team on his shoulders since he was 18. Atletico hasn't had succes in the european tournaments for many years now, and every time, the blame is on Torres. Some of the major wuropean clubs has been after him for years, but the buy-out clause in his contract was waaaaay to big. Even James Dolan would have said no . He had his contract extended last year, after he had expressed wishes to leave the club.

The clause was lowered to a more reasonable level. He did that because he loves the club too much, just to leave on a free transfer. That's why Liverpool took the chance this summer and Atletico agreed. Everybody was happy. Fortunately Atletico has another young superstar, called Sergio Agüero. He is from Argentina, is 19 years old and a fantastic talent. They actually have a pretty good team this year.

Back to Torres: He is a fantastic player, and when he has addapted to the English way of playing soccer (the teams in Spain play a more technical type of soccer while it's more physical in England), he will be a great player for Liverpool.