In American sports, each league has different levels of restricted and unrestricted free agency - in baseball the team owns your rights for the first six seasons of major league service, football makes you an unrestricted free agent in five, basketball also in five - but how does that work with the process of junior teams and coming up in soccer?
As I understand it, there's no draft - you sign as a minor with a junior team, and eventually get called up. How long after you make the primary team do they own your rights, or is it in perpetuity until they cut you lose?
― milo z (mlp), Sunday, 7 May 2006 22:41 (nineteen years ago)
There is a stipulation that if you leave the club before you are 23 the club is entitled to a compensation payment as they have funded your development.
Other than that you simply become a free agent once your contract expires. This is commonly referred to as a Bosman transfer, after Jean-Marc Bosman, an otherwise unremarkable footballer who changed the entire transfer system (read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosman).
― Onimo (GerryNemo), Sunday, 7 May 2006 22:48 (nineteen years ago)
― Rufus 3000 (Mr Noodles), Sunday, 7 May 2006 22:49 (nineteen years ago)