25 year old Argentinian Jonas Gutierrez might be following the path that Scotland’s Andy Webster has forged after buying out the remaining two years on his contract from La Liga’s Real Mallorca and heading to Premiership side Newcastle.

The only problem with that is that the players contract is co-owned 50% with Argentina’s Velez Sarsfield, who are claiming the player was on loan and is owned compensation if the player is to be sold.  Since Gutierrez hasn’t been “sold”, Sarsfield want the player back in training camp on July 9th and claiming the player is theirs again due to terms of the original agreement.

Mallorca originally had the chance to sell the player to Harry Redknapp’s Portsmouth, but wanted more than the 8 Million Pound that was first offered. After that original amount was turned down, Gutierrez walked in to the directors and dropped the cash to buy out the remaining two years after being there for three years (where the Webster ruling kicks in).

Now Mallorca is playing the cash strapped, poor me club after losing out because of selfishness.

via Sky

“Because of our financial crisis, this could really damage us. In fact, it has come at the worst possible time,” said Grande.

“This matter is not closed because the club has decided to go to FIFA to reclaim our right. The minimum we want to recuperate is the £8million Portsmouth offered us in the winter.”

Is there any chance Mallorca and Velez will get anything? We’ve already seen what can happen when players force the clubs hands after refusing to allow players to move on when the proper offer comes in, rather than being held hostage by the club for more money.

image via Football

UPDATE -  Seems like everyone has an angle for the up to date round up of all the stories surrounding the Cristiano Ronaldo and his Manchester United status.

Things just keep getting better for Cristiano Ronaldo (38 goals in all competitions so far this season) as reports are suggesting that Manchester United is preparing to offer him a new, improved contract taking him into the 9.3 Million Euro per season range.

Ronaldo had just recently re-upped his latest deal a few months ago, but this new deal would bump him up 4.7 Million Euro per year more. It’s thought that the new deal (150k+ Euro’s per week) is including Image Rights, something similar to what was believed to be in David Beckham’s contracts.

An interesting thing that caught my eye was in the “Clause” part of this reported new contract. Ronaldo’s alleged buyout price for clubs to come in to purchase in a cool 127 Million Euro, but more interesting is the NEW clause written in respect to the introduction of the Webster Ruling.

According to Article 17 of Fifa’s transfer regulations (Andy Webster), players who sign contracts when aged under 28 are able to unilaterally break those contracts after just three years and to prevent Ronaldo from doing this, Manchester United has included language stipulating that he would have to pay a very big, yet un-named sum personally to buy out the remaining time on the contract.

I bet we see many more of these NEW clauses with young players as clubs are starting to protect themselves from losing out on their investments and protecting themselves from clubs that are possibly looking to poach young players from clubs rather than paying Millions of Euros.

Example—

Imagine if Chelsea hadn’t have had to pay the 34.4 Million Euro for Michael Essien that they paid to Ligue 1 Olympique Lyon in August of 2005. All Essien would have had to do with the new Webster Ruling would have been to notify Lyon that he was leaving and exercising his right under Article 17 after three years under contract and then buy out the remaining contract terms with his own money.

If that had happened, I would imagine that Chelsea would gladly repay the player the money he paid to buy out his contract in a “signing bonus” (something he was going to get anyways and just added to the top) and then sign him to even better improved weekly wages, which would make sense because at the end of the day Chelsea would be saving tens of Millions of Euros and could focus that money on purchasing other players.

See what kind of door this Webster Ruling has opened?

Depending on the outcome, African Nations Cup winner and Egyptian Essam El-Hadary might be the first successful player to invoke the Webster ruling.  After playing at Egyptian powerhouse Al-Ahly since 1996, El-Hadary decided he’d had enough and deserved an opportunity to play in Europe, with Swiss destination FC Scion first choice.

The problem though is Al-Ahly feel they still have “The Beast” under contract and the player is still theirs.  FC Scion on the other hand have announced the signing, saying that the player has paid compensation to the Egyptian club, in the neighborhood of $400,ooo and the equivalent to the last two years on his contract.

Another sticky issue, El-Hadary is 35 years old and the first CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) ruling was for players under 25 years of age.  This one is going to get real interesting quick and the outcome will definitely set the tone for the future of domestic football/soccer worldwide.

image via AlJazeeraSport