Before Real Madrid sign anyone in the January transfer window they will want to see a marriage certificate as well as the other necessary paperwork.

“When we prepare the transfer of a player, the first thing we ask him is whether or not he’s married,” Real boss Bernd Schuster said at a seminar on leadership in football last week. “These types of players are more stable.”

So players eager for that dream move to the Bernabeu might think of getting their agents to send in a copy of the wedding video as well as that skilfully edited showreel.

But is Schuster right? Are married players really more reliable, more consistent and more disciplined than the young, free and single? Is it worth turning down a teenage prodigy because he doesn’t have a steady girlfriend?

Schuster himself married at the tender age of 20, and yet still managed to fall out with practically every club he ever played for.

His wife Gaby is a bit of a legend in Germany. She negotiated his move from Cologne to Barcelona in 1980 and according to rumours he never signed so much as a restaurant bill without her permission.

After switching to Real Madrid, and then Atletico Madrid he moved back to Germany with Bayer Leverkusen. After tying up the last of those transfers, the then Leverkusen general manager Rainer Calmund said of her: “I’d never had to negotiate with anyone tougher than Frau Schuster.”

PHOTO: Schuster stands on the touchline during Real’s Champions League game against Lazio in Rome, October 3, 2007. REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito