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Extreme measures taken by footballers in the past to force a transfer

Some of these players have forced a transfer, will the rest join them?
Some of these players have forced a transfer, will the rest join them?

To hand in a transfer request doesn’t put a player anywhere close to leaving – we’ve moved on from those old fashioned days.

As a result, formal transfer requests are relatively rare among high profile players in this day and age. More importantly, a transfer request has no legal bearing. Since the club holds all the cards in the matter, the transfer request becomes a waste of time. All it does is merely provide fodder for sports journalists. Handing in a transfer request does not always mean the player is any closer to the exit door. It is just a polite little request which your owner will turn down as he's perfectly entitled to.

We've seen the likes of Robbie Savage and Raheem Sterling try every other trick in the book in an attempt to secure a transfer away from their clubs. We've seen harsher measures being taken in the past as well. Here we go through 5 such techniques or tricks aka Machiavellian manoeuvres that footballers implemented to force a move:


#5 Feign an injury

What about this technique?

This is perhaps the kindest way to force a transfer. It's indeed very generous. With this move, you'll be killing not two, but three birds with one stone. First, you'll be withdrawing yourself from all of the manager’s plans. Two, you'll be discomfiting your owners and the boardroom. Three, you'll ensure that you don’t actually get injured while training or on match-day and safely pass your medical with the club you want to force a move to.

Who adopted this method?

We had Frenchman Loïc Rémy try this with Alan Pardew in his endeavour to secure a move to Chelsea and boy did he do it well. In 2014, he claimed he was struggling with a strain in his groin to avoid the final few games of the season. Later, the player on loan from Queens Park Rangers told L’Equipe - “We had nothing to play for and I didn’t want to risk getting hurt again. The coach Alan Pardew understood my point of view. Newcastle want to sign me but I don’t know if I’ll stay. The World Cup is a window. I’m at a turning point, it will be massive improvement or stagnation.”

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