Typing "Figo voltar Sporting" gives me this interview,

"O Sporting é um clube que estimo, é o meu clube do coração», começou por dizer. «Mas não é minha a responsabilidade de não ter regressado ao Sporting». Não voltou por duas razões. Primeira: «Joguei em clubes de topo na Europa, pelo que o Sporting não tinha as condições financeiras para me contratar, e também porque o campeonato português não é tão forte como o campeonato espanhol ou italiano».

Agora a segunda: «Nunca houve da parte do Sporting a intenção concreta de contratar. Nunca houve uma proposta concreta, houve apenas notícias na imprensa. Por isso foi-se falando, falando, mas nunca se concretizou». Por isso o regresso gorou-se. «Não é agora que estou em final de carreira que vou regressar ao Sporting. Não faz sentido. Gostava muito de ter regressado ao Sporting, mas não vou ser eu a oferecer-me."

Which I'll now translate what he says poorly! -

"Sporting is a club that I value, it's the club of my heart, but it's not my responsibility that I have to return to Sporting. I played for the top clubs of Europe and Sporting didn't have the financial conditions to sign me. Also, the Portguese championship isn't as strong as the Spanish or Italian.

Sporting never demonstrated a certain intention to sign me, there wasn't a concrete proposal, just news in the papers. I'm not willing to return to sporting at the end of my career, it doesn't make sense. I would've loved to have returned but I'm not going to offer myself to them."

It was mentioned in the papers throughout the summer of 2008 and I believe what he says above. He could've returned, done something nice at the end of a lucrative footballing career and given something to Portugal other than his face advertising beer and business parks.

heh, you mentioned larsson there earlier, and he's the polar opposite. He stayed at celtic for ages (on very decent money mind) because his family were settled. Then spent two years in barcelona, sampled a bit of life at the top, then moved his family back to sweden to play for this first club. He turned down a fairly substantial whack of cash to have a very good crack at a premiership title, and another european cup with man utd, because he was only there for the length of his summer holiday. Then it was back to sweden, having left a fantastic impression on the man utd fans.

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
Comparing Rui Costa to Recoba really is misguided, one was a proven world class player, the other was a hopeful young talent from S.America. Rui Costa was approaching 30 when he moved to Milan, if they weren't prepared to pay £80,000 a week then there would've been a huge line of clubs willing to do so. How much did Man Utd pay bloody Larsson a week?

Seriously Steveee, exactly how many clubs were prepared to pay £28 million quid, plus £20 million in wages, plus extras for a 29 year old? I'd say milan were in a queue of one for that one.

I would be surprised if larsson was on over £40,000 a week. and even then he was only on a three month deal.

He was a proven, world-class player and I have no doubt teams from Germany, Spain and England would've been willing to pay him the same wages or more. I'm not going to argue that the transfer fee was steep, just the fact that he was not overpaid, given his status and ability. However, he cost exactly the same amount of money as Juan Sebastian Veron did and I'm sure Milan got a far better return than Man Utd did.

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
heh, you mentioned larsson there earlier, and he's the polar opposite. He stayed at celtic for ages (on very decent money mind) because his family were settled. Then spent two years in barcelona, sampled a bit of life at the top, then moved his family back to sweden to play for this first club. He turned down a fairly substantial whack of cash to have a very good crack at a premiership title, and another european cup with man utd, because he was only there for the length of his summer holiday. Then it was back to sweden, having left a fantastic impression on the man utd fans.

Heh? How can that be the polar opposite to Rui Costa? It's almost a like for like career path.

Sorry, I can't resist:

He stayed at Fiorentina for ages (on very decent money mind) because his family were settled. Then spent five years in Milan, sampled a bit of life at the top, then moved his family back to Portugal to play for this first club having left a fantastic impression on the Milan fans.

edit: let's not forget he won a Champion's League with Milan too.

It might be that TMK has a hard time giving Milan players any respect.

He's comparing Larsson to Figo.

Anyway Rui Costa did good work for Milan but I still associate him more with the Viola.

ursus arctos wrote:
He's comparing Larsson to Figo.

From what I've gathered he has an even harder time giving Inter players any respect.

ursus arctos wrote:
He's comparing Larsson to Figo.

I suspected that, but I was quite clearly comparing Larsson to Rui Costa in the original post.

Hmm, my other half has just had a very serious word with me after spending the whole night glued to OTF and ignoring her. It's OTF or her apparently. Didn't ganja have this conundrum and he chose OTF?

Don't answer that, she's got a point.

We've had discussions about Figo on here before (probably the old board).

In my view, he is indeed, as Barça fans would have it, a peseteiro. He moved from Barça to Real for no other reason than to line his pockets. As some would have it here, he would be perfectly justified in doing that as a professional. Yes. But the fact is that if he'd stayed at Barça, he'd only be slightly less filthy rich than he is at the moment, and he'd be worshipped as a god. As it is, he's not worshipped anywhere, as far as I can tell - certainly not in Portugal. And apparently, as steveee has described well, he's still grubbing around for an easy buck.

I really don't like the man.

Aaaaahhhh, so thats what its all about.
Im over here in Madeira and in the middle of a disaster zone (32 dead apparently). Its been raining all week and there seems to be nowhere for the water to go after all the recent construction work.
Figo and this Socrates bloke are allover the TV and with neither myself or Ms Clock speaking a word of Portugese its been a struggle to figure out whats happening with the two of em.
Steeeeevvveeees right about it being a struggle to get people in to watch games as well. I went to Nacional v River Ave last sunday (ms clock declined) and there was approx 1000 there. The ground being ridiculously high up the side of a mountain wont help. The taxi driver told us that maritimo & nacional are paid by the government to stay in existence AND the EU have paid for a new ground EACH. Which even the locals think is ridiculous.
The match was very poor quality and I bumped into a fellow London based Sunderland fan couple outside the ground, which was nice. Nacionals is easily the most spectacularly positioned ground Ive been too and Maritimos will be at sealevel apparently as its just along from our hotel.
Two 5000 seater stadiums in one town thats built on a cliffside is absolute fuckin lunacy.
So thats what Ive done on my holidays.

You're still there! And you're safe!

Thank God for that!

He was a proven, world-class player and I have no doubt teams from Germany, Spain and England would've been willing to pay him the same wages or more.

I sincerely doubt it, not in 2001. 80,000 a week is pretty much more than anyone was on in any of those three countries. only rooney and ferdinand are on much more at man utd right now.

as for veron, he was more than 3 years younger than Costa. and they were able to still get 15 million for him.

He's comparing Larsson to Figo.

yeah, Sorry if it wasn't obvious. Larsson is even more rui costa than rui costa. He couldn't be tempted to stay at a club right at the very top of the European game for an extra few weeks so keen was he to get back to sweden.

It might be that TMK has a hard time giving Milan players any respect.

Nah, that's not it. The clubs at the top of Serie A have spent as much as the clubs at the top of the premiership, and they spend more on wages. Milan apparently had a bigger wagebill than man utd. It's just that they spent a lot of the money on players that were at the newly bankrupt lazio/parma/fiorentina/roma. And they spent huge amounts on swapping around players between themselves.

These players were all really good. but they were getting old, and cost far too much. Rui costa was a fine player for fiorentina but he wasn't exactly the future was he?

From what I've gathered he has an even harder time giving Inter players any respect.

Well they do play for inter.

This is just a crazy argument - Fiorentina fans worshipped him, Milan fans had a great respect for him, Benfica fans worship him. I'm as sure as I can be that nobody who got to see him play on a regular basis, myself included, felt short changed (admittedly he was almost playing for free when I saw him regularly - but this was only revealed after his retirement). How often did you see him play, other than in major tournaments and against Ireland? It's as if he drops out of your conciousness his ability goes out of the window. This is as big a nonsense as your dismissal of Seedorf as a waste of space.

These players were all really good. but they were getting old, and cost far too much. Rui costa was a fine player for fiorentina but he wasn't exactly the future was he?

Well, the future is a gamble, which I'm sure Man Utd fans know more than most. Sometimes a promising young £20m signing works, but most of the time it doesn't. When you want a player who is absolutely proven to play at a world class level for you with little time if any required to adapt, then quite rightly you should pay more. Of course, this is never a guaranteed thing either, as Lauren Blanc could testify.

I'd be curious to know how much of Figo's issues off the field have come down to poor representation.

There was the astonishingly complex situation where he ended up signing contracts with both Juventus and Parma in 1995, I'm sure that this was down to conflicting agents claiming agency rights over him and going off and negotiating their separate deals.

The deal that took him to Real Madrid was just a bizarre situation. If I remember correctly Perez offered him a big pile of cash for nothing on the basis that if he could arrange a deal to buy him from Barcelona then he must join on pre-arranged and lucrative terms or pay compensation.

I think that Figo must have thought the chances of Barcelona selling a virus to Real Madrid were below minimal, yet alone their very best player so perhaps understandably him and his advisers took the cash and ended up locked into it.

I'm rarely sure how to judge whether a world class player costs too much, other than to say that they're ALL too expensive; and some dozen players are going to be at the top of the wage list whether they 'deserve' to be there or not. But of course there's more going into it than performance on the pitch. Great players can have a large impact on their club's training, younger players, team morale, marketing and ticket/shirt sales, etc. Rui Costa wasn't just a fine player, he was a leader.

Of the top 20 highest paid footballers today, how many are 'the future'? You don't normally pay top wages to the future; you pay them to the establishment. (Insert large Manchester City caveat here.) A lot of players in the top 50 aren't really the future but are very much the present; the rest are all past it but still of great value to their clubs. Who's currently #50, Alessandro del Piero; Totti's #28, Thierry Henry is still up at #11. But Totti and Del Piero have been huge for their clubs, so you continue to pay them. When they extended Del Piero's contract, given that it was no longer 1998, were they going to give him a nice fat pay cut? (Maybe they did! I don't pay much attention to the numbers.)

Rui Costa was indeed a joy to watch at Milan; he was still the present if you ask me and at or near the top of his game. I suppose someone could argue that such financial moves are what undid these clubs longer term (well, obviously, your Parmas...) but Milan did win the Champions League while he was there.

dalliance, Figo used to be represented by José Veiga, who is now general manager of Swindon Town. He had to do a runner from Portugal because the tax-man seized all his assets, he accused the directors of Sporting for instigating the tax-office's investigation of his finances. The director's of Sporting then instigated a court case for slander and he hasn't been seen here since.

Veiga represented almost all the golden generation players who left Portugal for Italy or Spain in the 1990s. Figo fell out with him big time in the 2004, allegedly over missing money, and the two terminated a relationship which had lasted over 10 years.

I'm almost certain Figo represents himself these days with regards to the numerous endorsements he makes in Portugal, but he used Jorge Mendes to negotiate his final playing contracts.