The Zidane Ruling

July 2001: Zidane signs with Real Madrid. And the soccer world as we knew it would never be the same.





Way back in 1990, when Hypercolor t-shirts were still cool and grunge music was just starting to sweep the nation, for the first time in world history the most important guy on earth was a Belgian. His name was Jean-Marc Bosman, a soccer player for a club team there. Bosman's contract had expired that year and he wanted to move to a new team in France, but he wasn't able to do so because his Belgian club could not agree on a transfer fee with them. Bosman was stuck, so he took his case to the courts and eventually won in what is now known as the Bosman Ruling. Bosman's victory meant that, from that point on, European soccer players were free to move from one club to another as they desired once their previous contract was up.

There are moments in every sport that change the game in ways that no one before had ever imagined. Some of these moments take place on the court or the field or the diamond, like the the zone defense or the blitz. And some of these moments take place in the courts, like the Bosman Ruling. The game of soccer was forever changed in 1990; 11 years later, it would change again.

If in 1990 the system of free agency had taken the sport by storm, in 2001 an even more shocking and drastic change would take place. Real Madrid's president Florentino Perez had revolutionized the sport by instituting a club policy that dictated that each offseason he would sign the best player in the world. Period. It was an amazingly bold and arrogant policy, since it presumed that the best players in the world would want to play for Real Madrid and that the player's club would be unable to stop them. In 2001, the best player was Zinedine Zidane. At an awards banquet in Monaco, Perez was sitting at a table next to the French star and legend has it that Perez slipped him a napkin asking him if he would like to join Real Madrid. Zidane said yes. Of course, at the time Zidane was still a player for Juventus, only the most popular club in Italy and one of the biggest clubs in the world. To make matters more difficult, Zidane was still under contract there - he had a deal that ran until 2005. Case closed, right? Not so fast. Perez encouraged Zidane to speak to Juventus in an effort to get out of his contract and then leaked the news to the press that Zidane wanted to leave Juve and come to Real. Juventus, despite having the best player in the world under contract for another four years, was caught in a disastrous situation. They couldn't keep Zizou if he didn't want to be there, but why would they sell their prized superstar? And if they were to sell him, how could they possibly get a fair deal since they would have zero leverage to help them bargain for a good deal? The Juventus managers stated that Zidane would not leave for Madrid, but as time went on it was clear that there was little they could do to keep an unhappy player. In July of 2001, Zidane was sold to Real for a then-record fee of $65 million.

In soccer history, the Zidane case might even be more revolutionary than Bosman's because, rather than changing the system to give the players more freedom, the Zidane case simply ignored the system altogether. Who cares about free agency or contracts or any of that? All of a sudden, any player could break any deal at any time to move to a new club. Heck, Ronaldo did it the very next year, moving to Real Madrid, too. So today, despite a system that is full of transfer fees and player clauses and contract extensions, there is nothing more powerful than a player's word. Then again, when you look at all the broken contracts, there is nothing less powerful, either.

This month, now that the World Cup is over, the world transfer market will explode once again. The annual flurry of signings and sales and purchases will begin anew. In fact, it's already begun. Before the World Cup, the team that has replaced Real Madrid as the world's wealthiest and most star-studded club, Chelsea, signed two superstars: the first to sign, Michael Ballack, moved on a Bosman transfer - his contract with Bayern Munich expired at the end of last season; the second, Andriy Shevchenko, pulled a Zidane - he told his club AC Milan that he wanted to move to England and there was nothing that they could do to stop him (like Zidane, who said that his Spanish wife wanted to return home, Sheva made up an excuse to avoid any blame, saying that he wanted his kids to grow up learning English, probably because his wife, an American, also wanted to be in a country where she spoke the language).

In today's soccer world, everyone is a free agent. No one is off-limits. If Real Madrid wants to sign Milan's Kaka, all they have to do is get the player to insist that Milan let him leave. If Chelsea wants Roberto Carlos, well, all they need to do is get their owner Roman Abramovich (the new Perez) to convince the player to ditch his club, Real Madrid (see, times have changed). There used to be a time when the Bosman Ruling seemed earth-shattering, a decision that would change the game forever. And for a time, it did. But today, the Bosman Ruling somehow seems insignificant. Ever since Zidane decided that, contract-be-damned, he wasn't going to wait until 2005 to switch clubs, the game as we know it has done a 180. Sixteen years ago, the clubs had all the power; today, it's the players. After all, who cares about a stupid contract? Not the players that sign them, that's for sure.

So this month, anything is possible. Don't be surprised to see Kaka end up at Real, Roberto Carlos at Chelsea, Ronaldo at Man Utd, Riquelme at Inter, and Cristiano Ronaldo at Barcelona, even though all of those players are under contract with their current clubs. In today's game, one that knows no salary caps or luxury taxes, world soccer is a fantasy sport - you want a player, you can get him. Bosman and Zidane might have hung up their boots, but this summer their influence on the game will reverberate around the soccer world like never before. (And in more ways than one - a guy named Materazzi's still got the bruise to prove it...)