Very good players have no problem moving to a different country.
To be candid with you, free agency hurts all sports. It's great for athletes making an enormous amount of money. But to say it helps the sports, I don't believe that.
I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who's been with three organizations in a week. It's like rotisserie baseball.
I haven't been in a position to be a free agent or know what that is like and then to have the chance to go where you want to go. That's always been - I feel, with players, they want that option.
I didn't want to leave Newcastle, but that's football.
I'm very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn't shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after.
There's very few guys that play for one team their whole careers, nowadays, especially in the cap era it's a lot tougher.
Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.
There are only a few players who play in the same team all their career. You come from somewhere and go somewhere else.
It used to be that a lot of the ranking tournaments were in Britain so British players could just drive an hour up the road and be there. I've had to travel from the other side of the world to play and live in the U.K.
That's part of free agency. You can go where you want at the end of the day.
I always think the same: English players don't generally leave England, which is strange. But of course, the Premier League's got the reputation as one of best leagues going, and one of the most competitive leagues.
Why is it that E.U. players are allowed to move country once they turn 16... but non-Europeans can only do so at 18? Why aren't we campaigning for a level playing field, where our best 16 year olds - who may not have an E.U. passport like I had - are free to move when they turn 16, like the best young players in Europe can?
If a player demonstrated that he is the best, and a team decides, even so, we don't want to pay him, as in any other business, he should be able to play elsewhere.
One of the most important things, actually, when you're playing on grass, is to move.
The ability of players to jump teams when their contracts are up has hurt fan loyalty.
People change teams all the time. People might not go from Green Bay to Chicago or from Chicago to Green Bay all the time, but people change teams all the time.
The buying power of clubs is very different. You can't sign players if you don't have money, and if there is no money, that's it. As a player, there's nothing you can do.
