When a player wants to leave - any trick is valid

From the beach, fake accusations, threatening to score an own goal to the excuse of… maternity leave, players are ready to use all means to force the club to give in. Once they are determined, it is difficult for any team to keep them.

Isak wants to leave, but Newcastle are not selling.

In modern football, contracts often only exist on paper. Power is supposed to be in the hands of the club, but in reality, many times it is the player who decides his own future.

A familiar saying in the football world - "Players will play where they want" - seems to never be wrong. Because when they are determined to leave, they can come up with all kinds of reasons, from reasonable to ridiculous to unbelievable. And recently, Juan Cruz of Leganes has created an unprecedented precedent: asking for maternity leave to put pressure on him to leave.

Endless “vacations” and refusal to board the plane

There are countless examples in football history. Romario is the most vivid example. After the 1994 World Cup, he insisted on spending three more weeks on the beach in Brazil, refusing to return to Barcelona. As a result, a few months later, Romario played for Flamengo, leaving the Camp Nou in a state of shock.

The most common way to “strike” is to refuse to train or to board a flight to a tournament. Diego Costa did this with Chelsea to force the club to open the way for him to return to Atletico Madrid.

Ousmane Dembele skipped training with Dortmund until Barca agreed to pay a fortune to bring him back. Gareth Bale also chose to stay silent, not joining Real Madrid's trips when transfer rumors arose. Even Luka Modric, who is usually quiet, once refused to travel with Tottenham, and then eventually set foot in the Bernabeu.

Dembele also rebelled to leave.

If these actions were simply “strike”, some cases turned into unbelievable dramas. Claude Makelele, while at Celta Vigo, staged a scene where his car was stoned and then reported to the police that he had been attacked by fans, all just to leave. This trick later paved the way for him to move to Real Madrid.

William Gallas is said to have gone further. During his fallout with Mourinho at Chelsea, it was rumoured that he would have threatened to score an own goal if he was forced to continue playing. Although Gallas later denied it, the incident still showed the level of determination of a player when he wanted to leave the club.

Strange reasons: from weather to… language

There are also players who choose to give reasons that are so ridiculous that they are almost unbelievable. Faustino Asprilla, the star of Parma, frankly said that he wanted to leave Italy because… “it was too cold.” Carlos Tevez, while at Manchester City, gave the excuse of “not understanding the language” and not liking the English food. The climax of the conflict was when Tevez refused to warm up during the match in Munich, creating one of the biggest scandals in Premier League history.

Hulk, meanwhile, “justified” his departure from Zenit to China with a seemingly reasonable reason: “I want my children to learn Chinese”. But everyone understood that it was just a cover for a contract worth tens of millions of dollars.

Perhaps the most shocking case is that of Dimitri Payet. During his peak period at West Ham, the French midfielder bluntly declared: “If the club does not sell me to Marseille, I will tear my anterior cruciate ligament.”

An extreme threat, but it worked. West Ham had no choice but to give in, and Payet returned to Ligue 1 with satisfaction.

Hulk once made up unbelievable reasons to put pressure on the club to allow him to leave.

In that picture, Juan Cruz added a new “trick”: asking for maternity leave. In football, it is not uncommon for players to take advantage of personal interests to pressure the club, but Cruz’s choice went beyond the usual framework, opening up an “unbelievable story” in a world already full of strange examples.

Who really holds the power?

The above cases illustrate a great paradox of modern football: clubs have contracts, rules, and regulations, but the players are the ones who have real control. The reason is simple: in a fiercely competitive transfer market, a disgruntled star can throw the entire system of a team into chaos. Clubs that are strong enough to keep him, as Dortmund did with Lewandowski, usually only last a season. After that, the departure is almost inevitable.

Juan Cruz is just a small example, but it reflects a general trend: today's players know how to exploit every loophole, from the law to public opinion, to decide their own future. For fans, these stories may be both interesting and satirical, but for clubs, it is a never-ending headache.

From endless vacations, false accusations, own-goal threats, weather and language excuses, to self-harm – football has seen all sorts of tricks players use to get what they want. And now, with “maternity leave,” Juan Cruz adds another chapter to the already-thick book of tricks to force a club to make concessions.

You can laugh, you can shake your head, but the truth remains the same: in the modern football world, when a player wants to leave, it is very difficult for any club to keep them. And the reasons given - reasonable or unreasonable - are sometimes just an excuse to legitimize an already predetermined truth.

Source: https://znews.vn/khi-cau-thu-muon-ra-di-chieu-tro-nao-cung-hop-le-post1578721.html