Unless you're from Scotland or are one of the dozens (maybe hundreds!) of people who support Wigan Athletic, you probably have no idea who Andy Webster is. You will. Webster just won a court case that could change the transfer market for soccer players forever.The jist of the case is this -- Webster quit Scottish club Hearts of Midlothian and moved to Wigan in May 2006. However, he had played only three years of his four-year contract with Hearts, who took the case to FIFA and argued that Webster violated one of their transfer regulations. A FIFA ruling awarded the club £625,000, but Hearts wanted £4.6 million for him in the summer transfer window.
So they took the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an arbitration body set up by the International Olympic Committee to settle disputes such as this. CAS ruled in favor of Webster, saying he could leave Hearts if he paid off the remaining value of his contract -- which was a mere £150,000.
As a result of this ruling, any player under the age of 28 can buy out the remainder of their contract after three years. Any player 28 or older can buy it out in only two years. And the implications of this are massive.
For example, let's say that you've got a star player like Cristiano Ronaldo of Manchester United, who signed a 5-year, £31 million contract extension last April. Real Madrid were rumored to be offering a monstrous transfer fee -- anywhere between £60 million and £100 million, depending on whom you believe -- in an unsuccessful attempt to lure him out of Manchester.
The Webster ruling, however, means Ronaldo can now leave Old Trafford at the end of the 2009-2010 season for a mere £12 million and change.
Many pundits are calling this ruling as important as the Jean-Marc Bosman ruling in 1995, which allowed European players to move freely to another club within the EU after the end of their contract term. The Bosman ruling essentially creating a free agent market in European soccer. The Webster ruling has the potential to slash transfer fees for star players. This threatens to make the gap between the haves and have-nots in European soccer even higher.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has blasted the ruling and plans to appeal. In the meantime, I have a feeling there will be more backloaded contracts in the Premier League than the NFL in the coming years.
(You can find more interesting takes on the Webster ruling at The Offside and The Run of Play. Thanks to them for bringing this to our attention.)
