Soccer Fans: Is the transfer system flawed?

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Wille
But since football (or soccer) has a world wide market, and the items of trade are actually living people. It would be very hard to arrange for trades between countries, or are players just supposed to move to african, south american, asian and european countries whenever the clubs tell them to?

Hmmm .... good point.

Imran: How does that work in the US sports? What do the baseball teams do about trading for players from Japan or the Domincan Republic for example?
Did Seattle send any players over to Japan in exchange for Ichiro a few years back? Or was it some other kind of agreement?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why shouldn't footballers have exactly the same freedom of employment as everyone else?

What would you say if you weren't allowed to leave your current job for a better one/location move whatever until your boss agreed that they'd let you go

Cause they signed a contract to play for a certain number of years... there own fault .

Imran: How does that work in the US sports? What do the baseball teams do about trading for players from Japan or the Domincan Republic for example?

Interestingly enough it is kinda like a transfer system in dealing with Japan. Teams basically offered a certain amount of money for the rights to the Japanese player. The Japanese player has little say over these proceedings (except to say that he wants to play in the US), and the club decides. Then the team that wins out in the semi-auction can sign the player.

Though in some cases, the player just ended his contract, and came over a free agent for anyone to sign.

I guess it is because owners feel that players wouldn't want to go to Japan, and they are probably right.

This is ONLY with Japan, however (there is more respect towards the Japanese league). For the Domincan Republic, players just come over into baseball and are either included as draftable, or if they qualify, become free agents, which means anyone can sign him. There is no compensation given to that league or the team that had the player before.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui Cause they signed a contract to play for a certain number of years... there own fault .

It was much worse than that. Before the Bosman decision clubs owned the players registrations even after their contracts ran out. The Bosman thing just meant that if a player ran out they got their registrations back and could go off on their own and negotiate with a different club!

[Imran Siddiqui]

It was much worse than that. Before the Bosman decision clubs owned the players registrations even after their contracts ran out. The Bosman thing just meant that if a player ran out they got their registrations back and could go off on their own and negotiate with a different club!

Similar thing happened in baseball, actually. The 'reserve clause' allowed a team to keep a player forever until the team decided to trade him, where the player had little say. That changed with Curt Flood, IIRC, who won a case in court.

[MikeH]

Similar thing, no modern court is going to rule that is acceptable.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well... maybe except for the French, but they've been bullied to accept it (just kidding... don't you Frenchies come pouring out like the Fins now).

[MikeH]

It was the European court that made the ruling and there are plenty of Brit posters here who'll tell you the French and Germans run that anyway.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, but Boddingtons doesn't count... at least as a person at any rate .