Spivs and charlatans: the murky tale of Luis Figo’s transfer to Real Madrid

Research conducted by Edward Geiselman, a former Professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, corroborated the theory that somebody who is lying will often break eye contact and glance away at a crucial moment during interrogation. Although it’s easy to read far too much into somebody’s tics or mannerisms, it is quite telling that in the recently released Netflix documentary The Figo Affair, on two separate occasions when the eponymous subject is asked directly about his seismic transfer from Barcelona to Real Madrid, he gives one-line replies during which his normally inscrutable stare is broken by a noticeable glance off camera.

The two answers came 22 years apart. “Look I have a contract and I expect to fulfil it,” he told one inquisitor in July 2000, before his extremely contentious departure from Barcelona, his eyes flicking sideways towards the end of the sentence. Over two decades on, as a more than willing participant in the documentary that chronicles a deal that heralded the beginning of Real Madrid’s galáctico era, Figo is asked directly if he’d meant it when he’d insisted he would not be leaving Barcelona just a few days before his departure. “Yes at the time I thought so,” he says, glancing away to his left, with the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

Of course the Portuguese international may well have been hurling truth bombs on both occasions, as The Figo Affair makes it abundantly clear that he seemed a reluctant participant in the scarcely believable transaction that made him a pariah at Barcelona. At his unveiling as a Real Madrid player, Figo could hardly have looked more miserable as he was presented with his shirt by club legend Alfredo di Stéfano, looking not so much like