Menzi Magubane
Extra-Time: Menzi Magubane says professional sports personnel in any sporting code should stop getting carried away and sign contracts without going through every detail properly.
Nowadays athletes have representatives and agents that negotiate personal terms for them before a deal is struck.
Clubs also have terms that athletes need to agree to before signing and those clauses are written into the contract. Once signed, it means everybody is happy with the contract or the deal wouldn’t go through.
It is sad to hear about athletes being in situations where they are unhappy with the contracts they signed when things don’t go as they imagined – and then it is too late.
Take the situation of Mamelodi Sundowns player Grant Margaman. He signed from the defunct Ajax Cape Town three seasons ago.
But he can’t be at Ajax as he is loaned out every season. In his first season, they loaned him to Ajax then last season he was at Swallows and this season he was shifted to SuperSport United.
It’s frustrating but he went there knowing very well what would happen if he didn’t perform to their expectations. Sundowns is known to have ridiculous contract clauses that most players and teams do not agree with.
When you sign with Downs as a young player you know what you are getting yourself into. Whenever they loan you out, you are not allowed to play against them.
This clause applies to any player that is still contracted to them. At the same time the player’s contract will be frozen, meaning a player can be loaned out several times but his contract will remain as it was when he first signed.
Margaman signed a three-year deal with an option to renew. This season is supposed to be his last but having spent all of his years being on loan, he remains a Sundowns player.
He is frustrated and wants out but he signed the contract and now he has no way of getting out. The midfielder is not the first player to be going through this.
The likes of Musa Nyatama, Ramahlwa Mphahlele, Thamsanqa Sangweni and Kwanda Mngonyama are on a long list of frustrated players when things didn’t go as planned. Only Mphahlele managed to crack it after coming back from his loan spell with Swallows.
Others decided to terminate their contracts in order to get better deals. Margaman won’t be the last as every young player wants to play for Downs but they will need to be extra careful on what they sign.
Image source: @TheCitizen
