Players involved in game of bluff and counter-bluff in the summers moving stories

Rory Smith, The Times 31 July 2013 Conventional wisdom regarding footballers transfer requests tends to be at odds with the truth, a leading sports lawyer tells Rory Smith Luis Surez has been thinking about it for weeks, but even he has shied away from going through with it. Gareth Bale knows it may be his next step, but does not want his hand to be forced. The former wants out of Liverpool, the latter is keen to leave Tottenham Hotspur. Neither, though, has gone so far as to make that desire official. Neither has deigned, thus far, to hand in a transfer request. The reluctance of Bale and Surez to inform their clubs formally of their wish to depart is not unusual. The transfer request remains a staple of the transfer window along with war chests and come-and-get-me pleas but it seems to have fallen from favour in recent years, with players preferring to agitate for a move behind the scenes. The most common explanation for that trend is greed. Players, the logic goes, do not want to request a move because it means they forfeit whatever loyalty bonuses they have written in their contracts at their present clubs. Instead, they make plain their discontent from behind the curtain, forcing a move without having the decency to admit it. That logic is over-simplistic. Transfer requests, in my experience, are largely symbolic, said Daniel Geey, a sports lawyer with Field Fisher Waterhouse. It is the moment that the player is telling the fans, in public, that he wants to leave. That is why many are reluctant to do it. It does not hit wages and it does not affect loyalty bonuses, because they are paid at a set time every season. Surez, say, may have his bonus paid in May, at the end of the campaign. He has already got last seasons, and he wont get next seasons no matter how he leaves Liverpool with a transfer request or not. You could miss out on some unpaid signing-on fees, but thats all in most cases. That is not to say there is no potential financial impact. Normally if a club wish to sell a player but the player does not push to leave the two parties will agree a compensation figure, based on the remaining value of his contract, to smooth the move.

Where the player has made plain his wish to leave, if a golden handshake is offered, it will be much reduced. That is true, though, whether the player has submitted a formal transfer request or simply gone on Uruguayan radio for example to explain how flattered he is to be linked with Arsenal. In Bales case, for example, Daniel Levy [the Tottenham chairman] will know that the player is still effectively agitating for a move, Geey said. So he may well say that he will not agree to a sale unless Bale forgoes all of his remaining contractual obligations. It is not necessarily the player who bears that cost, of course: this is where agents come in. It is their job to persuade the buying club to compensate their client for the cost of going public. Indeed, as Geey said, transfer requests often help the selling club to extract concessions from a players suitors. In that sense, it does speed a move. Whether it is worth the risk, though, is a different issue. The malcontents Robin van Persie (Arsenal to Manchester United) The Holland forwards refusal to sign a new contract at Arsenal left the North London club with no choice but to sell him, for the bargain price of 24 million, last summer. A league title followed ten months later at Old Trafford. Fernando Torres (Liverpool to Chelsea) The Spain striker was an immediate success at Anfield, but eventually tired of Liverpools decline and handed in a transfer request in January 2011. Chelsea ended up paying 50 million to extricate the forward. They probably regret it. Carlos Tvez (Manchester City to Juventus, eventually) His refusal when summoned from the bench by Roberto Mancini during a Champions League game left Tvez ostracised from Citys squad, but it was not for 18 months that a move materialised.

Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United to Real Madrid) There was no threat to hand in a transfer request, but the Portuguese is thought to have made it plain to Sir Alex Ferguson that he wished to leave in 2008. He stayed for a year and moved for a world-record move. Wayne Rooney (Manchester United) Permanently dissatisfied, Rooney tried to move to Manchester City in 2010, but was won over by promises of new signings and an improved contract. The forwards unhappiness has surfaced again, this time because of the new signings.