Be Excellent To Each Other

I think UK law would allow them to put him on "gardening leave" for 6 months minimum, depending on circumstances. That's certainly been the case when people have wanted to leave UK based F1 teams.

That's only because the employee has accepted it, you could almost certainly sue for restraint of trade. You'd cause bad feeling in the industry of course, which is why an F1 tech director carrying team secrets won't do it. A footballer doesn't carry trade secrets, it wouldn't restrict him too badly, if at all.

Simply put, no-one will refuse to hire Ronaldo because he wanted to play instead of sit on his arse for 6 months.

People will CERTAINLY refuse to hire..ooh... let's say Frank Dernie if he walked out of Williams on Friday with all their up to dat dev knowledge and was at Red Bull on Monday, because he'd do it again.

The reason in F1 is to prevent someone taking any data with them, the assumption being that after a certain time the data is out of date. "Gardening leave" appears to be a legal compromise between protecting the rights of the individual and the organisation.

It could be argued that Ronaldo leaving Utd to play for a team that competes against them, as Madrid definitely would in the Champions League, is harmful to Utd, and as such they are entitled to protect themselves.

Most contracts specify notice and severance procedures, which are usually enforcable, and should be honoured by both parties. Gardening leave takes place during the contract, technically, not afterwards. An attempt to say where someone can work after the contract is restraint of trade.

There's probably a lot of subtleties I'm missing, as I'm not a lawyer or anything. There's probably a couple of people on this board who would know, though.

Oh you could certainly argue both ways, especially at £2000 an hour...

There is one other crucial difference here though. An F1 tech guy can start at 21. He can still be working at 75. You're blocking maybe 1% of his working life.

A footballer of Ronaldo's type has maybe what... a decade at the very top. Ronaldo has a full 4 years on his contract, even if you only allow 6 months it's quite a chunk of his "working life" and I'm sure a court would take that into account. Plus it would really affect his chance to represent his country, something an F1 tech guy never has. And again, I'd expect that to be taken into account.

The result would probably be like English football's old arbitration system really and he'd leave for Madrid at a panel decided fee considerably lower than his market value.

What Ronaldo would probably need to establish, is that he was intentionally being excluded from first team football.

Given that his manager has been quoted in the national press saying that the club would consider this course of action if he attempts to broker a move to another club, I can't image it would be too difficult.

The ego has landed!

Not sure if this deserves a thread of its own, but Villa have announced that rather than having a commercial sponsor next season, they're going to have the name of a local charity on their shirts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/a/aston_villa/7433169.stm

It's a bit buried now, because understandably a story about someone not going to manage Chelsea is pretty important.

Or to put it another way "Villa can't find a shirt sponsor"

A possibility I suppose, but it seems unlikely?

Why does this subforum even exist?

Because people like subfora, apparently we must have structure.

I respectfully disagree

I think they're probably a good idea, if they're done properly.
They should probably be based on popularity, rather than "nobody else wants to see this shit." There's plenty of threads in the main forum with more posts than this entire subforum, so we've done something very wrong.

I'm with you on the structure thing though, there's been far too many posts recently moaning about how this place needs to outline its aims, so everyone can decide if they want to be here and we can attract new members, but really I think they just need to enjoy it for what it is or go somewhere else.

I'm free to say that in here, because nobody else will read it

Barcelona have UNICEF as their shirt sponsor, although that was in contrast to previously having never sold the rights to their shirts.

Certainly an admirable move on Aston Villa's part, doubt many will follow though.

Villa had the option of several very lucrative shirt sponsors.

It's just a caring, loving club.

VIlla >>> other clubs.

No he doesn't.

He has signed a contract to be employed by MU PLC. If he plays for the reserves then MU are fulfilling their side of the contract. It is extremely unlikely that he has a Klinsmann-esque "if I'm fit, I play in the first team" type clause.

What Ronaldo may be able to do is buy out his own contract, which I think is done by paying United 2/3rds of what they owe him as salary on the remainder of the contract.

MU certainly have a case, in law, of tampering and inducement. Given that football transfer by and large work as a result of tampering and inducement, it would be interesting to see whether they would push for a court case that they would easily win.

Burnley FC once turned down Time as a sponsor as they didn't like the logo being on their shirts. The fact that Time wanted to also sponsor Blackburn had nothing to do with it. At all. No.

He would still have a good case under restraint of trade.

No he wouldn't. Trust me.

You'll be telling me a Arsenal season ticket entitles you entry to football matches played at the Emirates Stadium next.

You can't sue for being dropped. They could easily cite that he's been a disruptive influence and bench him.

They wouldn't do that though.

You can sue for not being allowed to do your job (restraint of trade like I say), it might hinge on proving whether he's good enough to make the first team. Calling 19 other premiership managers would solve that.

In reality of course it would never get to that stage.

He is too valuable an asset, it would disrupt the team to an unacceptable degree, the fans would have a fit (especially if they had a bad run of form), it would put off other top players going to Man Utd and I imagine it would set a dangerous legal president if he did mange to win in court.

And the players association would have a fit if he lost.

It is hugely beneficial to both sides that players contracts are not tested in a court of European law. For a start, a multi-year contract would not be worth the paper it was written on because one side could exercise a reasonable notice period (call it 3 months) and be off. The idea of a transfer market would collapse overnight.

This is why US sports won't expand into Europe. The draft/trading/free agent system would collapse in a heartbeat when it hits the reality of employment law.

Indeed.

Nah, if American sports really, really wanted to expand into Europe, they'd get an exception, by throwing cash at it. Just like they did in America.

No they wouldn't. Let's put it this way, if the EU tells FIFA and UEFA to jump, they will jump. See Bosman. Same with F1 and a whole host of other sports. The NBA in Europe? No chance, because if EU law applies to an NBA Europe franchise, you can be damned sure that it will have to apply to the LA Lakers as well.

(Must confess, the reason I know so much about professional sports contracts is my dealing with the hockey club, and the hiring and firing of imported players. Whoo, you should see the minefields you have to worry about!)

Where's the restraint? They're still paying him, and he still plays for the football team. They could just start him in a match, and if he is awful you have a justified reason for benching him. If not, then you've still got your player. Peter Crouch at Liverpool has a far better goal scoring record than Kuyt, and yet Kuyt gets picked ahead of him. I don't believe that just because he's sat on the bench, Crouch could get the EU to declare his contract null and void on restraint of trade. There are plenty of managers, players and pundits who'd say he's better than Kuyt.

He possibly could. He wouldn't be dumb enough to because he's not good enough for people to risk hiring after he does that.

Plus HE doesn't have a statement from his manager saying that he'll be benched out of spite.

Ferguson does have a statement from Ronaldo* saying he would like to work for a competitor. In fact it is his "dream" to work for a competitor. Fergie could very easily pull of AS and Marca as evidence of deliberate unsettling of his employee and salary negotiation.


*In the same way that Ronaldo has the benching statement from Fergie. i.e paper talk.

True, though I doubt they'd bench him anyway. If they refuse to sell him to Madrid, Ronaldo is contractually obliged to play for ManYoo. If he plays to his usual dizzying heights, all is well for them. If he doesn't, or refuses to train or gives a big girly strop and storms around and throws toys out of his pram, Fergie could legitimately bench him or throw him in the reserves as being a disruptive influence. That's certainly not against his contract, unless he has a 'must play all games when fit' clause, which he doesn't.

We signed Andy Cole lol