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

Despite plenty of fans being pleased when their favourite player signs a new deal with the club they support, everyone knows deep down that in the modern world of football, contracts don’t mean a lot. To speak in cliche, a lot of football contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They simply play a small part in the career of a player these days, whether it’s to squeeze more money out of a club or to send a message to the fans.

Sometimes big-name players sign a new deal at their current club knowing full well that they don’t intend to stay there much longer. Despite pledging their future to that side, we’ve seen plenty of times now that a player can sign a deal one day and be gone from the club the next. Here are five players who signed a new contract, only to depart in the following summer transfer window.

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#1 Fabian Delph

Aston Villa's club captain Fabian Delph signed a new deal only to abandon ship a few months later

The departure of England international Fabian Delph from Aston Villa in the summer of 2015 stung for a variety of different reasons. Delph was the club captain at the Midlands club at the time of his departure; the buying team, Manchester City, didn’t appear to truly need the player; and a week before the move he even put a statement out on the official Villa website pledging his loyalty and future to the club and stating that he wouldn’t be moving to City.

A week later, of course, he was in Manchester posing in his new team’s shirt.

Worse still, Delph had only signed a new deal with Villa in the previous January – a deal that was supposed to keep him at Villa Park until 2019 after he’d been linked with a move away from the club when his current deal was set to expire that summer.

Despite being at Villa since 2009/10, Delph had only been linked with moves away since the beginning of the 2013/14 season, when he’d found a rich vein of form, and had ended up being voted Player of the Season by the Villa fans. That was enough to put him into the England squad post-World Cup 2014, and he appeared to be firmly in Roy Hodgson’s plans going forward into the Euro 2016 campaign, too.

The financial terms of Delph’s 2015 contract at Villa were pretty much unknown, but then-manager Paul Lambert described the deal as a “great coup” for the club, while Delph stated that he had no intention of “bailing out” on the Villa.

And of course, seven months later he was gone, showing once again that contracts mean very little in modern football. He’s since struggled for playing time at City, although he’s broken into the team more often this season, inexplicably as a left-back. It’s a far cry from his time as Villa’s star midfielder.

#2 Luis Suarez

Luis Suarez did a u-turn and left Liverpool after signing a new deal

Despite scoring 23 goals in 33 league games for Liverpool in 2012/13, the summer of 2013 saw Luis Suarez posturing for an Anfield exit. While Liverpool had shown tremendous loyalty to the Uruguayan striker – sticking with him through thick and thin, even during the period in which he was accused of racist taunting and then later when he was suspended for biting Branislav Ivanovic – Suarez hadn’t returned the favour off the pitch at least.

May 2013 saw him state that he wished to leave Liverpool citing unfair media pressure on his family following his spate of high-profile incidents.

Liverpool’s then-boss Brendan Rodgers stated that Suarez had shown total disrespect for the club, but maintained he wouldn’t be going anywhere despite being forced to train on his own. An approach from Arsenal was knocked back, and a few months later Suarez changed his mind, citing the support of Liverpool’s fans as his reason.

And sure enough, he lived up to his word – after a blistering start to the 2013/14 season, he inked a new deal with Liverpool in December 2013 that would keep him at Anfield until the end of 2017/18 and would also pay him £200k a week.

Unfortunately, it turned out that contracts don’t mean much when Barcelona come knocking. Suarez had gotten himself into hot water at the World Cup in the summer of 2014 – biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini – and had earned himself a four-month ban from FIFA, and so when a bid of £75m came in from the Catalan giants, Suarez decided he wanted to go and Liverpool felt they had no other choice but to accept.

The Uruguayan star made the move and debuted at the Nou Camp in October, and Liverpool was left to simply accept their place on football’s food chain – a handful of notches below Barcelona.

#3 Ilkay Gundogan

Ilkay Gundogan's short contract with Borussia Dortmund may have benefited both sides

Playmaker Ilkay Gundogan cost Borussia Dortmund a bargain fee of less than £4m back in the summer of 2011, and he had an immediate impact on the team’s fortunes – he played 28 times in his debut season as Dortmund won the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal, and in 2012/13, he helped his side to the final of the Champions League – even scoring a penalty in the final, although Dortmund eventually lost 2-1 to domestic rivals Bayern Munich.

Unfortunately, with Dortmund unable to pay the kind of wages that other giant European clubs could, it always seemed unlikely that they would keep hold of a player of Gundogan’s talents.

Despite this feeling, Gundogan signed a new deal with Dortmund in April 2014 that would keep him around until the summer of 2016 at least. This was a contract he stuck to, but a year later it appeared that it would likely be his last deal with the club.

On the 30th April 2015 it was announced that Gundogan had no intention of renewing his contract with Dortmund, and with rumours of a move to Manchester United emerging, the only question seemed to be whether he’d be sold or whether he’d walk for free in the summer of 2016.

So it came as quite a shocker just two months later when Dortmund announced they’d inked a new deal with him to keep him at the club until 2017.

As with Fabian Delph, there was no news on the financial terms of the deal, but it was expected that he’d received quite the hike in pay. Evidently, it wasn’t enough. In the summer of 2016 – the original point in which Gundogan was expected to leave – he indeed departed to Manchester – but to City, not United. New boss Pep Guardiola paid £20m for the player, although injuries restricted him to just 10 Premier League appearances in his debut season.

It’s likely that the deal Gundogan signed in 2015 was simply done to ensure Dortmund received a decent fee for the player when he did leave, rather than allowing him to move on a free transfer or for a cut-price deal in the January 2016 transfer window. It was a smart move from both parties, essentially.

#4 Gareth Bale

Contracts don't mean a lot when Real Madrid come knocking - just ask Gareth Bale

Despite signing with Tottenham Hotspur way back in the summer of 2007, he didn’t begin to rise to fame until two seasons later in 2009/10. After appearing 24 times for Spurs and never being on the winning side, Bale’s fortunes began to change when then-manager Harry Redknapp deployed him in a more attacking role than he’d been used to primarily as a left-back.

From there the Welshman went from strength to strength and he played a large role in taking Spurs into the Champions League for the first time in 2010/11. It was in the Champions League where Bale’s star truly rose – he destroyed Brazilian international Maicon over two games against Inter Milan, and then helped Spurs defeat AC Milan in the last sixteen of the tournament.

Unsurprisingly, he was immediately linked with moves to basically every big European side you could possibly think of, but by 2011/12 he was still at White Hart Lane. And to confirm his loyalty to the club, in the summer of 2012 he inked a new four-year contract. The contract apparently gave Bale a big bump in pay as well as a new squad number – #11, not #3 anymore.

Bale stated that he wished to take Tottenham back into the Champions League, but Spurs fans were dreaming if they thought that would happen. Just a year after signing his new deal, Bale was off to Real Madrid for a world-record shattering transfer fee of around £85m.

It was a sad day for Tottenham but realistically Bale’s contract was never going to be completed – once a club like Real Madrid begins to sniff around a player it’s only a matter of time before they arrive at the Bernabeu, contracts are damned.

#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.