Jermain Defoe's time in North America was so brief he may not have understood Major League Soccer, let alone Major League Baseball. He left Toronto FC in 2014 after making 19 appearances and scoring 11 goals so quickly that he probably never got a taste for the city's baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays.
Yet he may be football's equivalent of a baseball player. Not on the sporting field but on the balance sheet. Even as Defoe's return to his homeland helped revive an international career that began in 2004 and could extend to the 2018 World Cup, one of English football's great survivors has a contract that may be the equivalent of some of baseball's more notorious deals.