Uncertain future for over 1,000 players
ZLATAN IBRAHIMOvIC heads the list of more than 1,000 professional footballers playing in England whose contracts expire on June 30.
The fabulously rich Swede has the option of another season at Manchester United or a lucrative move elsewhere, but there will be hundreds of footballers on free transfers whose future in the game looks bleak in the extreme.
The table of available players from the Premier League down to the fifth-tier National League has been compiled by a specialist firm hired by a club to give them advance information on who to target ahead of the next transfer window.
But as well as the potential bargain signings, the four-figure number also illuminates how precarious professional football can be when your contract runs out.
Meanwhile, five major football agencies now dominate the middle-men business, judging from the list of all transfers and contract renewals in the last two windows. The five listed in order of deals done are Wasserman Media Group, Stellar, Unique Sports, Base and Key Sports.
TERRY VENABLES has been working for over 20 years on making a success of his Spanish hotel La Escondida, in the countryside outside Alicante. It was planned as a warm weather football training base, but has become a boutique hotel attracting showbiz royalty John Challis (above), Boycie from Only Fools and Horses and Coronation Street’s Sherrie Hewson this week. THE perceived wisdom was that Thomas Bach’s plan to award the 2024 and 2028 Olympics at the same time would see Paris get the 2024 edition, 100 years after their ‘Chariots of Fire’ Games, with Los Angeles staging the next one.
But Paris has bid for the World Expo in 2025, leading to questions within the International Olympic Committee about whether the French capital can cope with two major global events in successive years, and that has put LA back in the running for 2024.
IT may not be a missile crisis but cricket’s most famous members’ club, the MCC, are in negotiations with the Cuban government. The Cuban ambassador’s residence in London’s Grove End Road, St John’s Wood is owned by the MCC and a long-term lease is about to expire. The MCC had considered expanding Lord’s into Grove End Road but are now set to extend the lease.