The Drama of Jean-Marc Bosman

I've always been fascinated by individuals who take on the system. It's the modern equivalent of slaying dragons. In this case, Jean-Marc comes across as tragic and an unlikely hero. He was never a talented footballer and yet he changed football as we know it. Here, he cuts a bitter and bombastic figure. But I guess most heroes aren't quite as heroic as we imagine them to be.

In an exclusive interview at his home in Belgium, Jean-Marc Bosman talks to Jamie Jackson about money, marriage and mercenary footballers. The man who changed football forever, making millionaires of so many players, clearly has a chip on his shoulder about the debt he believes the game owes him

Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer

There is a residual sadness about Jean-Marc Bosman. His once wiry footballer's frame has become portly. His cheeks are flushed. He pulls at a cigarette and sips from a tall drink. And his eyes offer just the occasional flicker of light. Bosman knows the legal ruling he won 10 years ago ensures his name will never be forgotten - its ubiquity could even mean an entry in the dictionary - but it is not the way he wants to be remembered.

The ruling by the European Court of Justice, in December 1995, that Bosman's former club RFC Liege should have allowed his transfer when he was out of contract wasn't just a victory for the Belgian midfielder, it was a victory for all players. Football would now be completely reshaped. Power shifted from clubs to players and their agents. Lucrative signing-on fees and grotesque wage inflation ensued. Welcome to the £100,000-a-week footballer.

In a five-year legal action, Bosman took on not only his club, but the Belgian FA and Uefa, the game's governing body in Europe. He won, and yet, at 31, he was finished. His marriage was over and any remaining joy for a sport he'd loved since the age of seven had gone.

"What's important is pride," he says now, with a faint smile. "Pride is more important than money." Really? During an afternoon spent discussing the episode that, he says, ruined his life, it becomes apparent that nothing animates him more than money.

His house sits down a quiet lane in Awans, just outside Liege in eastern Belgium. There is a downstairs bathroom, plush furniture, a well stocked drinks cabinet, swimming pool in the back garden and a gleaming black BMW in the drive. And another house, which Bosman rents out. But, as he says more than once, Bosman believes football still owes him. As he sees it, it is not just players who have benefited, but top clubs whose inflated income is built on the back of the easy flow of superstars his victory permitted. He does not consider the smaller clubs that suffered financially or the thwarted opportunities of home-grown players in those leagues where freedom of movement within Europe has ended most limits on foreign players.

"One club's transfer fee pays another's wages," Jimmy Hill wrote in 1995. Carl Otto Lenz, advocate-general of the Luxembourg court, suggested at the time of Bosman's action that clubs could safeguard their prime assets by offering longer contracts. But, as Hill pointed out: "Long contracts do not always enhance performance."

Winston Bogarde earned an estimated £8million in his four years at Chelsea, while starting only four times for the first team. Manchester United and Chelsea would say that Mark Bosnich's two 'Bosmans', which earned the goalkeeper more than £8m for a total of 28 league appearances over the five seasons he played for them, were hardly value for the clubs.

But the ruling has worked in the employers' favour. It allowed Glenn Hoddle to bring Ruud Gullit to Stamford Bridge in May 1995 on a £3m, two-year deal that would begin a pre-Roman Abramovic era of domestic and European success for Chelsea. Arsenal would argue that Sol Campbell's infamous move across north London from Tottenham in 2000 certainly helped in the subsequent winning of two Premiership titles and two FA Cups.

"Professional football differs from other jobs," manager Graham Taylor says. "You can have players who don't care, yet if they are under contract you can't sack them. Maybe the clubs used to have too much power. But life is about balance. And players of Jean-Marc's ilk have suffered most. They're the ones not being paid the money in the new game. Overall the ruling hasn't done much for football."

Jean-Marc Bosman was born on 30 October 1964 in Liege, and left school at 17 with no qualifications. He joined RFC Liege, in a £66,000 transfer from the city's other club, Standard, on a four-year contract in 1986. The move was not as successful as he or the club would have liked. When his contract came up for renewal, he was offered £500 a week, less than a third of his then wage.

He chose to move across the border to France. "I signed a contract with Dunkirk that was three times better. Liege also agreed a deal." But a wrangle over the payment of the transfer fee ensued. Liege wanted it paid before Bosman could play while Dunkirk claimed this was not the original agreement. He returned to Belgium and when the Dunkirk chairman refused RFC's demands, the Belgians hiked the transfer fee to £250,000 - four times what he had originally cost.

Bosman returned home and the nightmare began. "I asked the chairman of Dunkirk if the contract I had signed was legal and he showed me the papers. I then received a letter from Liege that my price was now €400,000. They had bought me for four times less than that, and they had only offered me a contract that was four times less. I had to react. It was an injustice, I felt they asked so much money yet the contract they proposed was so bad, so unfair."

With legal action pending, Bosman was in limbo. "I had to train alone. I missed my team-mates, the dressing room. It was horrible." A proposed move to MVV Maastricht, 12 miles away in Holland, collapsed. He had spells with lower-league clubs in France and Belgium, a four-month sojourn on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, and returned to fourth-division Belgian club Vise in 1994 for a last fling. It was a sad ending. Just down the road from Liege, Vise has a population of about 7,000. The football club is at the back of a municipal sports centre, players change in Portakabins. Bosman's first outing after winning his case was watched by 323 spectators. It finished with crowd taunts of 'Free transfer for you, Bosman!' and his substitution. A year later, not able to support himself, the football career was over.

By then his marriage had suffered. "I had no salary. My wife wondered who would pay for the apartment. I let her live there with my daughter while I went to stay at my parents' house, where I lived in the garage. Without my parents, I would have been on the streets. I stayed for two-and-a-half years."

And his wife? "I'm not angry with her," he says. "She brings my daughter to see me and everything is very human. We say in Belgium that relationship problems begin when there is no money. Football was my dream since I was a kid. When I lost my job as a player, I became depressed. I didn't know what kind of drama I was in."

At the time of his victory, Bosman said: "The transfer slavery ruined my life, so I have no regret about the results of my actions on other players' careers." Does he still feel the same? "Yes. What happened ruined my life." Did it have a detrimental effect on football? "I wanted other players in my position to benefit." He concedes, however, that there have been negative effects. "Players now sign big contracts and if they are on the bench, they don't care."

From his settlement Bosman would eventually receive £720,000 - seven weeks' pay for David Beckham, but still about £400,000 more, surely, than he would have earned if the move to Dunkirk or Maastricht had gone through without trouble. He wanted - still wants - more, but the footballing brethren for whom his action secured a lucrative future deserted him. There had been discussions about fundraising games in Paris and Barcelona, featuring some of the best players in Europe. When a match was eventually played in Lille in May 1998, only a couple of thousand spectators attended, there were no sponsors and many top players stayed away.

"Maradona said he would come, but never showed up," says Bosman. From the Premiership, only a 37-year-old Steve Bruce attended. "Luckily, Canal-Plus offered money." The French TV company paid about £180,000 to Bosman, as did Fifpro, the international players' union. Donations from players came to £70,000.

"There was a Belgium-Holland game in 1997. All 24 Dutch players gave €2,500 and the brothers De Boer [Frank and Ronald] said, 'Because of you we can go to Barcelona next year.' The Dutch asked the Belgians if they would do the same. But the Belgian federation had told them not to."

Other disappointments ensued. "In 1998, Mark de Vries, a Dutch forward now at Leicester, and Filip de Wilde, a former Belgium goalkeeper, asked the Belgian first-division players for money. From 18 clubs they received about €20,000. One captain told me the young players said, 'Jean-Marc Bosman can fuck off.' Their salary was five times higher than before, but they didn't realise it was thanks to me. At night in the discos they were seen spending €250 drinking champagne and it was thanks to me!"

Others were more supportive. "I went with Fifpro to Sao Paolo and met Pele when he was minister of sport. He said, 'You've done a great job for players.'"' His face brightens. "I still have pictures."

How does he live now? "From the interest on the money I received. I can live a good life, but compared to all the work I put in - well, it's not so much."

Bosman says the Belgian football federation paid its £250,000 contribution in 1999 only because of pressure from Fifa who wished to avoid negative publicity ahead of the approaching European Championship that Belgium co-hosted. And hostility towards Bosman extended to the government of the time. "They were close to the Belgian FA. The Prime Minister said we'll respect the Treaty of Rome [which established the European Community in 1957] but not the Bosman case. Eventually, he had to apologise."

Despite the taxman taking an interest in the compensation he received, Bosman does not seem to have done too badly financially, certainly far better than the average Belgian lower-division player.

Does he still enjoy football? "Yes. I watch on TV. I still like a lot of football. I don't go to stadiums, though. Only when I receive a free ticket. So if Roman Abramovich invites me, I will go."

He leads what he calls a normal life with his Sicilian girlfriend of four years. He is close to his 75-year-old mother - his father is dead - and has two sisters. He plans to begin working for Fifpro soon, his first job in a decade.

He pauses. "Why me? I have often asked. I lost my wife, I can only see my daughter one week in two. I've suffered enough in life. Now I want to have some fun, because I'm 41 and I know I'm not eternal."

What would make him happy? "One big game, one big signal. A sign from a chairman like Abramovich. That would make me really happy. I keep on asking myself why do chairmen from clubs like Real Madrid and Chelsea, why do they always say negative things about me? Because if I hadn't done all this they wouldn't have so much from TV rights and selling shirts. Every time they speak about me it is not in a good way. But Guy Roux [recently retired after 44 years as Auxerre manager] said, 'Bosman deserves a statue in every big club.'"

Bosman would settle for less. "Why don't they play just one game for me? I deserve that game because it's thanks to me that they make so much. What makes me most happy now is that people in the street stop me to say thank you."

One wonders why. Bosman has a fame he claims he does not want, through winning a victory he was so determined to achieve. All he seems to have gained is a feeling of loss. And a self-corrosive conviction he has been cheated out of riches his mediocre playing talent would never have yielded anyway.