And if Barça and Dembélé are right?

It is usually one of those questions that when you think about it cold, it always has an easy solution, but when it happens hot, live, come on, in life itself, always, always, always, they are answered in the same way: "It depends" .

And there are times when to be a sports director, the best thing is to rely on those who know the most.

For example, in Pau Donés and Jarabe de Palo when they sang that song about Depends, what does it depend on?

Depending on how you look at it, it all depends.

Now, I know you can't imagine that in the middle of a tense meeting in which, for example, it is decided what to do with Dembélé, Pau's voice sounds in the sports director's head telling him that the solution is "it depends". But I would tell them that it can happen, come on, that it has surely happened and it will surely happen again.

Because let's see, the first solution, the most direct and visceral, is that if he doesn't want to renew, then we stop counting on him and it's over, and in this way we rely on the players who continue to be committed to the team, to the club, knowing that that of the team and the club is not exactly the same although it may seem so. A player committed to the team would be someone who trains with intensity, shows positive energy, helps his teammates, knows how to be there whether he plays or not, and every time he has to take risks, he does it accordingly. And he even smiles when he comes to train.

What happens is that this same professional may find himself at the end of his contract and not be very keen on leaving and providing a final economic return plus the release of the part of the salary that he has to receive in the second part of the season. We would say then that this professional is not aligned with the club and its wishes. Same professional, same situation, same moment and two different answers. Wow, that depends on where we look at it.

To see it on another site, another form of "it depends", let's imagine that the same club has decided not to renew a player from its squad and he has a good offer to continue his career at another club, but his home club needs his support. services because his squad is short, he has casualties, he has no replacements in that position or he considers that player to be an essential guy in the locker room, so he responds to his request with a resounding "no". In addition, the club will always be able to claim that they have a signed contract and that they must fulfill it and, of course, they are paid handsomely to do so.

Would it be understood then that that player told the club that he is not going to play again? And if he claimed that playing put his physical condition at risk and the possibility of continuing his career in another team, wouldn't we end up calling him selfish, pesetero and all that stuff? Well, surely the answer is again “it depends”.

But we would all do well to get used to this type of situation because this issue is going from occasional to trend and if we look at European football we will see that more and more teams have dossiers of this type in their management, since in this financial vision of football in which we are living, the players, their agents and their families have decided that they too can manage these club changes and that the economic returns produced go into their pockets, with which this changes the paradigm of financially sustained football in the sale of players

Is that the future of football following the economic structure of American sport, where there are no transfers?

Answer: “It depends”.

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