Adrian Mutu

Adrian Mutu (born 8 January 1979) is a Romanian professional football manager and former player, who currently is the head coach of the Liga I club CFR Cluj.

During his playing career, he was deployed as a forward or an attacking midfielder.

He joined the latter in 1998 for the equivalent of €700,000 and won the Cupa României.

At the turn of the millennium, he signed for Inter.

Mutu started his career playing two years for Argeș Pitești and half a season for Dinamo București, before joining Inter Milan in Italy midway through the 1999–2000 Serie A.

After only ten games with the Nerazzurri, he left for Hellas Verona and then Parma, for which he scored 39 goals in the next three years.

From his international debut in 2000, Mutu played 77 matches for the Romania national team and scored 35 goals, a joint record alongside Gheorghe Hagi.

He was included in the country's squads at the UEFA European Championship in 2000 and 2008.

A four-time winner of the Romanian Footballer of the Year award, only Gheorghe Popescu and Gheorghe Hagi have received the award more times, with six and seven wins, respectively.

Mutu began his professional career with Argeș Pitești and Dinamo București.

Mutu made his Inter debut in Serie A on 6 January 2000 in the final minutes of a 5–0 home win over Perugia.

He totalled 14 appearances and two goals in his first spell at the San Siro, with both goals in the Coppa Italia.

In 2000, Mutu was sold by Inter to Verona in co-ownership deal, for 7,500 million lire (€3,873,427).

The Veneto side also signed Massimo Oddo, Mauro Camoranesi (later a teammate at Juventus), and young rising star Alberto Gilardino (later a teammate at Fiorentina) that season.

As Verona faced fellow strugglers Bari on matchday 18 in February 2001, Mutu came off the bench with Verona down a man and trailing 0–1 and scored two goals, inspiring Verona to a 3–2 victory.

The club narrowly avoided relegation through winning the relegation tie-breaker playoffs.

In June 2001, Verona bought Mutu outright, for 5,100 million lire.

(€2,633,930)

His excellent form brought him a €22.5 million transfer to Chelsea and a nomination for the Ballon d'Or in 2003.

Following a failed drug test, he was released and returned to Serie A to join Juventus.

On 12 August 2003, Chelsea paid Parma €22.5m (around £15.8m) for Mutu's transfer as part of new owner Roman Abramovich's spending spree, on a five-year contract.

He made his debut 11 days later, and scored the winning goal from distance in a 2–1 home victory against Leicester City, and with two in a 4–2 win at Stamford Bridge against Tottenham Hotspur on 13 September, he totalled four goals in his opening three games.

In the 2004–05 season, Mutu had a difficult relationship with the club's new manager José Mourinho, with each accusing the other of lying about whether the player was injured for a 2006 World Cup qualifying match against the Czech Republic.

In September 2004, Mutu was banned from football for 7 months until May 2005 after testing positive for cocaine use.

A controversial figure off the field, Mutu received widespread attention following a positive test for cocaine while playing for Chelsea in 2005, which resulted in his immediate release from the club, a subsequent seven-month ban from the Football Association, and Mutu later being ordered to pay £15.2 million in damages to his former employers, the largest financial penalty in FIFA history.

Chelsea started to seek compensation from Mutu in early 2005.

The Football Association Premier League Appeals Committee decided that the player had committed a breach of his contract without just cause which made Chelsea eligible to claim the compensation.

Mutu started his first appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in April 2005 but the case was dismissed in December 2005.

After the 2006 Italian football scandal and the relegation of Juventus to Serie B, Mutu decided to join Fiorentina, where he played consistently for the next five years.

The selling club reported the fee as $2.1 million while the buyers said it was $7.15 million, leading to an investigation by Romanian tax authorities in 2006.

On 11 May 2006, Chelsea applied to FIFA for an award of compensation against Mutu.

In particular, the club requested that the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) award compensation to the club following Mutu's breaching the employment contract without just cause.

However, on 26 October, the DRC decided that it did not have jurisdiction to make a decision in the dispute and that the claim by the club was therefore not admissible.

On 22 December, Chelsea lodged a new appeal before the CAS seeking the annulment of the DRC's decision.

On 21 May 2007, a CAS panel allowed the club's appeal, set aside the DRC's decision, and referred the matter back to the DRC, "which does have jurisdiction to determine and impose the appropriate sporting sanction and/or order for compensation, if any, arising out of the dispute" between the Club and the Player,"

On 7 May 2008, the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber ordered Mutu to pay €17,173,990 in compensation to his former club, Chelsea FC, for breach of contract.

This included €16,500,000 for the unamortised portion of the transfer fee paid to Parma, €307,340 for the unamortised portion of the sign-on fee (received by Mutu), and €366,650 for the unamortised portion of the fee to the Agent, but was not to take into account the determination of the damages for the amounts already paid by the club to the player (consideration for services rendered) or the remaining value of the employment contract (valued at €10,858,500).

He has unsuccessfully tried to appeal the fine numerous times, and was banned for a second time in 2010 following a positive test for sibutramine while at Fiorentina.

He then had a season at Cesena and French club Ajaccio, before returning to his native country with Petrolul Ploiești in 2014.

After two more brief spells with Pune City and ASA Târgu Mureș, Mutu retired from professional football in 2016.