STUART BATHGATE

THERE are many advantages to being Frank Lampard or Cristiano Ronaldo, natural ability and bank balance being two of the most obvious. As of yesterday, those players and their counterparts now have one more aspect of life loaded in their favour, thanks to the ruling made by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Now, if Lampard fancies a move from Chelsea, or Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid, while still under contract, they will have a pretty good idea of how much it will cost them to do so. Provided CAS's judgment on the dispute involving Andy Webster, Hearts and Wigan Athletic is accepted as a test case – and last night there was every indication that it would be – players will enjoy significantly more freedom of movement from one club to the other.

Fifa had originally ordered Webster to pay Hearts £625,000 as compensation for breaking his contract. Webster appealed against that amount, and so did Hearts – they wanted £4.5million, arguing that was the money they would have got for Webster if they had been able to sell him on the transfer market. CAS found in Webster's favour, reducing the amount he had to pay to £150,000, which was the amount he would have earned had he honoured his contract with Hearts.

That is the rule of thumb which players can now apply. If you have nine months of your current deal to run, and earn £10,000 a month, you can expect to cough up £90,000 if you want to move on early. Well, you can cough it up, or agree a deal with a new employer which includes recompense for any such penalty.

The one thing working in the favour of clubs, and perhaps the only thing which is preventing a complete collapse of the transfer market, is the fact that not every player is now suddenly free to buy out his contract. If you are under 28, you only become eligible after you have served the first three years of your contract; if older, after the first two.

In either case you can only do so provided you give notice within 15 days of the end of the season. Anyone walking out in other circumstances could still find himself suspended from playing football.

Even so, while this means clubs need not fear any mass walk-outs by players, it also means that there is little point in them offering long-term deals to anyone. And if you only offer a player a two-year deal should you want to sign him or re-sign him, you run the risk of losing him more quickly as he becomes a free agent.

On the positive side for some clubs, the Webster ruling should mean a substantial saving on transfer budgets. If Lampard, for example, were tied to a long-term deal with no hope of leaving unless his employer agreed, it would be a seller's market, and Chelsea, in this case, would be looking for something in the region of £25m for the midfielder.

Now, any would-be employers of Lampard can wait until he frees himself then enter a bidding war for his services. Having saved £25m, they could afford to offer him a slightly higher salary than they would otherwise do.

There might still be legal problems if a would-be buying club were found to have induced a footballer to breach his contract, but there are ways and means of getting in touch via third parties which would almost certainly help them to avoid such pitfalls. In such circumstances the role of agents would be enlarged, and their wallets engorged.

If you regard agents as something akin to the spawn of Satan – as Hearts' majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov appears to do – this is why you will regard yesterday's judgment as a damaging one for the game. Much of the money that would once have been transferred from one club to another will now be diverted into the pockets of agents and their associates.

But, while Hearts labelled yesterday "a dark day for clubs", many players would have been quietly raising a glass to Webster last night. Although footballers are richly rewarded for what they do, they have hitherto been subject to more stringent c
ontractual conditions than workers in many other fields. The CAS ruling, like the Bosman verdict before it, gives players that bit more freedom of movement, and imposes further limits on clubs' abilities to constrain them.

Q & A

Why is this being regarded as a victory for Andy Webster?

Because the £150,000 he has been told to pay Hearts is less than a quarter of what Fifa originally ordered him to pay.

Does this mean that anyone able to pay can break his contract?

No. Players can only cancel their contracts after three years if under 28, and after two years if older – and only within 15 days of the end of a season.

What wider effect will the Webster ruling have?

It could set a precedent for the amount players will have to pay to break their contract. Clubs could try to sign players on longer deals.

Taken from the Scotsman