5 stars who signed a new contract...and then left the following summer

#5 Florian Thauvin

Florian Thauvin left Lille for Marseille without even kicking a ball, despite a long-term contract

And we end with an extremely odd case. French winger Florian Thauvin – currently plying his trade at Marseille and garnering a reputation as one of Ligue 1’s finest talents – signed a deal with Lille in January 2013 that should’ve kept him at the club until the end of the 2017/18 season. Somehow though he departed the club just nine months later, without ever kicking a ball.

How exactly did this happen? Well, at the time that he signed with Lille, Thauvin – then just eighteen years old - had been starring for the smaller club Bastia, who he’d helped to gain promotion into Ligue 1 in 2011/12. When Lille made their move in the January 2013 transfer window, part of the deal was that the youngster could remain at Bastia on loan for the rest of the 2012/13 season.

It was a move that made sense for both sides, but benefited Bastia massively – the promoted side ended up finishing 12th – just six places below Lille, who finished 6th – and Thauvin was named the Ligue 1 Young Player of the Year for his impressive displays. That summer, however, he would prove again that contracts don’t mean a lot in football.

Thauvin fell out with Lille’s officials due to disagreements over the structure of his contract, namely his wage – evidently, he felt that after his outstanding performances for Bastia, he was worth more money than Lille had initially agreed to pay. The club for their part refused to improve his terms, and so the player went AWOL from training.

Rather than protract the whole affair, Lille then decided to wash their hands of a player they should’ve had on their books until 2018 – selling him to Marseille for around £12m, making a tidy profit in the process as they’d only paid Bastia around £3m.

Ironically, Marseille signed him on a five-year deal...before he moved to Newcastle United two years later, proving that if you’re Florian Thauvin, contracts evidently don’t mean a lot at all.