Out of contract players

Sorry if that has already been mentioned, but I google searched and found nothing but I'm, interested as to the situation with out of contract players.

I'm Man City and have a whole host of players that interest me who have contracts out on the 30th June, including Matthieu Flamini. I'm now only 5 months from this expiration and Fiorentina have already offered him a contract. Why can't I approach to sign him? I've had this a few times... and there are only one or two people I can approach to sign, such as Barnetta who has a contract out at the same time.

I'm guessing there's a reason?

In England, you cannot offer a contract to a player coming to the end of his contract till around 6 weeks before the expiry of his contract. You can still offer 6 months before for players outside England and teams outside England can offer for players in England within the 6 months.

Never knew myself. I missed out on a host of potential signings to this!

Cheers FrazT, thats cleared that one up for me. Wonder why they've done that in real life? Surely that opens the door for top players to let their contracts run out and move to the continent, as Flamini has done.

Also, why did no one offer a contract to Flamini until just before his contract ran out in real life?

Also, why did no one offer a contract to Flamini until just before his contract ran out in real life?

Maybe they did but we didn't hear about it?

Originally posted by Fishlcfc_9:

Cheers FrazT, thats cleared that one up for me. Wonder why they've done that in real life? Surely that opens the door for top players to let their contracts run out and move to the continent, as Flamini has done.

Well - the six months was the indirect result of a European Court of Justice court case starring a certain Jean-Marc Bosman...

Not exactly sure how the English rule came about, but in any case, it's rare at the very highest level that contracts are left so late to be renewed.