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His goals have won games in Romania, Italy and England. His ball control, his movement, his audacity afford him hero worship. Yet his mistakes in life, which included using cocaine and arguing with José Mourinho, led to his being hounded toward the exit of his sport in an unprecedented manner.

A former employer, Chelsea, cast him out in 2004. But then, shocked that he should come back into the game and be bought and sold for millions of euros in Italy, Chelsea has legally harassed him ever since. The case could run and run.

Chelsea, backed by FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, is still trying to destroy him. This month, the Court of Arbitration for Sport endorsed a judgment that Mutu must repay Chelsea €17 million, or almost $24 million, to compensate the London club for the transfer fee it had paid Parma, an Italian club, in 2003.

Mutu’s view is that, in terminating his contract and casting him out of soccer, Chelsea had written off the fee.

The player’s lawyers are considering his options. There might only be one: to seek justice ultimately in the European Court of Human Rights.

This, in turn, might have implications for FIFA and for the legitimacy of the quasi-judicial bodies set up by sports to keep their affairs out of the civil courts.

Mutu, 30, is attempting a comeback after knee ligament trouble. His current club, Fiorentina, had a Champions League qualifying match against Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday night. A Russian club, Zenit St. Petersburg, on Tuesday morning denied Russian media reports that it was bidding to buy Mutu and pay him €5.5 million a season.

All the while, the player is pursued with unprecedented severity by Chelsea. He was one of the club’s first big-money purchases after it was acquired by the Roman Abramovich, though Mutu was known to be a troubled man. {#}

Claudio Ranieri, his coach when he arrived at Chelsea, was fired to make way for Mourinho, who did not have a high opinion of Mutu as a player or a person.

Their differences became public when Mutu played a World Cup match for Romania even though Mourinho had pronounced the player injured. When Mutu returned, Chelsea subjected him to a drug test. When that revealed traces of cocaine, the club shamed him and tore up his contract.

One interpretation was that the owner and the coach were setting an example to the sport: zero tolerance for drug takers.

England’s Football Association subsequently banned Mutu from any involvement in the game for seven months and fined him £20,000, or about $33,000 at current rates. FIFA made it a global suspension.

Mutu has admitted he was a lost soul. His wife, a television presenter in Romania, had divorced him and won custody rights to their baby son. He had a wild dalliance with a porn star. He was banned from driving after a police chase in Bucharest.

Chelsea compounded his instability. The club was on a high, top of the Premier League and taking the moral high ground by getting rid of a misfit whose drug habit breached his contract.

However, Juventus was interested. It picked him up for nothing, encouraged his rehabilitation, and its coach, Fabio Capello, changed him from a winger to a midfield creator.

Juventus then sold him on for €8 million to Fiorentina. And there, under his old Parma coach, Cesare Prandelli, Mutu blossomed into a playmaker voted the best in Italy.

Chelsea, rebuffed over claims to compensation from the Italian clubs, went for the player. Its lawyers sought the value it effectively had lost on his transfer, and FIFA deemed Mutu responsible for €17.17 million to be paid to Chelsea.

The case bounced round FIFA and ended up with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, based in Lausanne. Three lawyers, from Italy, France and Germany, threw out Mutu’s final appeal and said he must pay.

“The decision is profoundly unjust,” Mutu said in a statement last week. “I think I have amply paid for an error of youth, which is light-years away from the man and the footballer I am now.”

There are contrasting pictures of Mutu. In January 2008, while the case was before its disputes process, FIFA published the words of a Romanian psychologist, Florin Tudose, on its Web site.

“Adrian Mutu is a spoiled child who was lucky enough to be blessed with huge talent, but who hasn’t been able to make the most of it,” Tudose concluded.

Mutu himself says he is happily remarried, has two more children and has turned down big offers to stay in Florence. He recently said his agent told him there were offers from English clubs again.

“I would not go back to London if they paid me in gold,” Mutu said he replied. “Nowhere is as good for me now as Florence.”

“After a difficult period in my life as a man and in my sporting career, I’ve found serenity in Florence,” he said in his statement. “There’s no question of me leaving. I am a sportsman but also, above all, a citizen of the European Union and I believe sporting justice must respect the principles and fundamental rights of the community.”

Anyone who thinks the case of Chelsea versus Adrian Mutu is over is mistaken. But while the stamina of Abramovich’s legal team may be limitless, Mutu only has so long left in sport — and therefore in the power of FIFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In the meantime, the case might redefine the powers of the tribunals sports set up to be their own judge and jury.