BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Two years ago, I went to see Jean-Marc Bosman. He'd been a fairly promising Belgium midfielder in the late 1980s. But in 1990, he found himself stuck at a club that no longer had any use, or a fair new contract to replace the expired one, for him. In spite of a few transfer offers from other clubs, Bosman's employer, RFC de Liege, refused to sell him. Bosman took his then-first division club to court and, five long years later, was set free.

To this day, the Bosman ruling -- which gave European soccer players their free agency -- is still the single most important ruling in soccer.

Bosman paid very dearly for the service he rendered to his sport. What looked to be a solid career was destroyed. He was 31 years old by the time his ordeal was over, and nobody wanted a midfielder who had not touched a ball in years. Bosman thinks clubs boycotted him. The only work he could find was on the tiny Indian Ocean island of Reunion and as a part-timer in the Belgian fourth division.

He finally quit football in 1995 and lived off the seven-figure settlement (he wouldn't disclose the exact amount to me) he'd gotten from the case.

Bosman was 44 years old when our paths crossed. And what remained of his money -- which had once been quite a sum -- had just about run out, the last vestiges of his fortune sunk into a T-shirt line which sold all of one unit (to his lawyer).

The heavy backlash of the case -- Bosman was publicly excoriated by the establishment of professional soccer clubs -- caused him to go down a slippery slope. First depression, then suicidal thoughts and alcoholism, which he's only recently recovered from.

But Bosman had always thought what he accomplished had been worthwhile. Over the next decade, the ruling he had forced turned the power dynamic between players and clubs on its head. Players no longer were at the mercy of their clubs. In fact, they, not the clubs, now decided where they would play. Lately, however, players have started taking liberties with that freedom.

Last week, I read that Mounir El Hamdaoui, a Dutch-Moroccan striker whom I like the looks of, has called in sick every single day for three weeks since his new head coach at Ajax, Frank de Boer, relegated him to the bench before a Champions League game against AC Milan. Simply put, the instant he stopped being a starter, El Hamdaoui -- scorer of 54 league goals in the past 2½ seasons -- has refused to show up to work. (He's quite obviously, and as admitted by the principals involved, not sick.)

How far they have come, these players, now doing as they please. El Hamdaoui was punished no more harshly than to be given a minor fine and told to take his winter holiday early. It's been some time since contracts have meant anything in soccer, but things are starting to get out of hand. Every pretense of professionalism is gone for some of these players.

The Bosman ruling was a good thing. It gave players what they were entitled to -- salaries commensurate to their worth in the open market. But it also liberated them of any accountability. They know they can just move to another club, should their current employer not appreciate them or put up with their whims. And that's regrettable.