Alfonso Alves, the Brazilian footballer at the centre of a transfer tug-of-war, is dumb. At least that’s what his lawyer says.

The 27-year-old striker, who was last season’s top scorer in the premier league (playing for Heerenveen), is just a kid, the lawyer says.
So he wasn’t really aware that he had signed a contract to join AZ of Alkmaar before Christmas. Which means there is no reason to block his move to Middlesborough, the English premier league side, which will pay Alves and his agents much more money than AZ.
And enable him to play at a higher level.
It emerged today that Alves has got his own way despite his low intelligence and a ruling by an arbitrage commission on Wednesday that effectively torpedoed a new deal this year. Alves is off to Middlesborough.
AZ have clearly been done and they are appealing to the world football body FIFA. But what’s the point? Alves doesn’t want to play for them.
This season he didn’t want to play for Heerenveen and made his point by not turning up for training.
We will have to see how the petulant Brazilian behaves in the UK… It makes you wonder the point of contracts and rulings when prima donna footballers rides roughshod over them all and join the clubs they really want.