Originally posted by TheG0RE49er:
somebody clear this up for me please.
im a sporadic soccer fan, ill watch the big games if their on tv, and i understand the sport since i grew up playing it.
one thing i never got though, what stops a team from not selling a certain player? im always seeing top quality players getting sold , especially if a team wants them. from what i see, it doesnt work like baskeball, football, baseball...you wouldn't see the lakers or yankees selling their best players every year just to get some cash. now i realize some players to stay with their clubs for a long time (messi, lampard, rooney), but for the most past that's not the case. even great players like c. ronaldo get shipped around..so what gives?
A team does not have to sell a player if they don't want to. Clubs do sell a player if he asks the management.
The thinking is simple. If a player wants to be somewhere else, he can't perform at the highest level with the current club. Other players will also feel that and there will be too much animosity in the dressing room.
Let's take Neymar's case for example. He wanted to play for Barca and no one else. His contract with Santos was expiring next summer. Santos tried to renew him for 4 more years (so they have better leverage when negotiating with Barca). He refused and they were scared of losing him for free next summer to Barca. So, they decided to trade him in the last year of the deal to a team Neymar will sign a contract with. Once two clubs agree on a fee, then the player involved and the new club have to come to an agreement on a contract as well...so Santos couldn't have just sold Neymar to the highest bidder.
So, some teams know that their best player will eventually end up at one of the top clubs (ManU, Chelsea, Bayern, Milan, Inter, Juve, Real, Barca etc.) and they are better off selling him when he is under contract. You saw similar thing happen with Carmelo and Dwight Howard...difference being in American sports players are traded for draft picks (no drafts in soccer) and other players.