Player movements in soccer outside the US are very different from American pro sports. Where here there would be an uproar at the practice of selling players to other teams for cash, and I believe its actually against the rules of our leagues, this is the norm elsewhere; in fact there are no player for player trades as such, though occasionally a player is included as “make weight.”
A few years ago, for example, Spanish perennials Real Madrid made a practice of buying at least one superstar every summer for ever increasing sums, tens of millions of dollars, and got the nickname of Galacticos. They bought in Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, David Beckham, Michael Owen and Ruud van Nistleroy. The strategy never really panned out and the club, which is owned by its supporters, went through several coaches, sent most of the Galacticos off and finally, before last season, threw out the club president responsible for the strategy.
When the EPL’s Chelsea were bought by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in 2003 he splashed out cash left and right, allegedly well over $700 million in just three years, to get stars and the result has been two league titles, one FA Cup and two League Cups. Though with no Champions League trophy after three seasons, manager Jose Mourinho was for a time rumored about to be sent packing and management seem to have adopted a smarter, role player-oriented strategy this transfer window. (There are only two windows a year when players already under contract can move, one in the summer when the European leagues are finished and the other for the month of January.)
Anyway, another aspect of the transfer market that may surprise Americans is that teams will occasionally sell their biggest player. Examples: Liverpool sold Owen to Real Madrid in 2004 for €8m, Manchester United sold van Nistleroy last summer for €15m and Manchester City sold Shawn Wright-Phillips to Chelsea for €22m. Heck, AC Milan sold Andriy Shevchenko, not only their best player at the time but also one of the top three players in the world, for €30m to Chelsea in 2006 but only after turning down double that money the year before! Players (can) leave in the US as free agents when their contract expires but we’re talking about, say, the Yankees selling Derek Jeter to the Mets with two or three years left on his contract or the Colts selling Payton Manning to the Cowboys.
Did I mention that veteran players often get a piece of the transfer fee, perhaps 10% on average, plus the chance to negotiate a new contract? That first part surely doesn’t happen in the US leagues, though the second may.
All of which takes us to today’s news. Arsenal, one of the EPL Big Four, only the second team ever (and first since 1889) to go undefeated for an entire season in 2003-2004, have sold their captain and star striker Thierry Henry to Barcelona for £16m, about $30M US. This is a guy who’s scored a club record 226 goals in 364 games for the Gunners and lead the French national team to the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 titles. He was runner-up for the 2003 and 2004 FIFA World Player of the Year award and in those two seasons also won PFA Players’ Player of the Year titles. Henry is the only player ever to have won the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year three times (2003, 2004, 2006) and has been the French Player of the Year on four occasions, an all-time record. Additionally Henry was named by football legend Pelé as one of the top 125 greatest living footballers in 2004.
Further, this leaves the team severely depleted up front with Emmanuel Adebayor the only healthy veteran forward, the teenaged Theo Walcott needing to show a lot more than he did this past season and Robin Van Persie needing to show he will not once again miss a huge chunk of the season to injury. Of course, the club has £16m to put towards a replacement.
For FC Barcelona I think this is a huge win and puts them as the early favorite to win both the La Liga and the Champions League next season. Nothing against Cesc Fabregas, who will have to step up big for Arsenal, but one can only imagine the quality of supply from Ronaldinho (who finally gets a rest this summer), Xavi and Deco and the striking partnership with Samuel Eto’o (assuming he stays at the Nou Camp) and Lionel Messi. Man, I think I’ll try and re-learn Spanish so I can better understand the announcers on GolTV’s match broadcasts.
US Note: Due to the league’s very different ownership structure, Major League Soccer teams trade players for other players or draft picks with each other though MLS follows the global practice when dealing with clubs outside the league. Fullham paid about a million dollars for Clint Dempsey this past January and PSV Eindhoven paid something like $1.5M for DaMarcus Beasley three years ago.
BillSaysThis 