Real Madrid has closed the signing of Jude Bellingham for 103 million, but if nothing unusual happens, it will shoot up to 130 since there are variables for 30.9 ‘kilos’, with easy compliance clauses for 25 million. Who cares that those 25 million do not count in the final amount, the club of soccer Who pays them to lower the cost for the public or to the one who sells to amortize those millions when it suits them with financial engineering?
At an accounting level, the division of a transfer between fixed and variable costs allows various financial engineering maneuvers, according to experts in the accounting of professional clubs consulted by El Periódico de España, from Prensa Ibérica. When a club signs a player, it divides the payment according to the seasons for which it is committed. If, for example, a player costs 10 million and signs for five seasons, the destination club allocates two million in amortizations in each of those courses.
Buyer and seller
Adding variable costs makes it possible to concentrate the amortization in the course in which the objective is reached, lowering the accounting bill in the first years. And the selling club is allowed not to allocate all the money from the transfer in its first accounting year, keeping that allegedly variable part for future years. Thus fattening future income budgets. Years ago, this strategy served to circumvent the regulations on LaLiga’s salary limit, since the employer only allocated the amounts paid in transfers within those limits. Thus, some clubs agreed that almost the entire amount of a transfer would be counted as a goal bonus. did not consume salary cap at the time of the signing, but they deferred the accounting to the moment in which the objective was met.
Over time LaLiga corrected its own regulations and a commission assesses whether the objective is very probable or not. For example, if there is a bonus in the transfer if a player scores more than five goals and has been exceeding that figure for several seasons, LaLiga counts it as a disbursement already made and, therefore, consumes a salary limit.
Returning to the signing of Bellingham, he Madrid He will pay those 25 million if in the next six years (length of the Englishman’s contract) the whites win the League or the Champions. Since they won their third League, in 1954, they have never gone more than five years without winning the championship. Besides, Madrid will also go through the box if they qualify for the Champions League, something that has been happening consecutively for the last 27 seasons. Personally, the player will earn between two and three million if he wins the Ballon d’Or, if he wins The Best or enters his ideal eleven, or even for minutes played.
The signing of Ousmane Dembélé by the Barça it closed at 105 million and 40 in variables. Among them a bonus of 10 million for qualifying for the Champions League in a five-year interval, which happened, and another for completing 50 games with the Barça shirt, a milestone that he also completed. To these variables were added 20 million more that were included, really a fixed one, for the Stade Rennes, the footballer’s training club.
Another easy compliance clause was the one signed Real Madrid when he hired Colombian James from Monaco. Various variables were added to the 75 million of the transfer, among them one that made Madrid pay a million euros every time the whites qualified for the Champions League in the following five seasons, with which they paid five million more, in addition to five for the Monegasque club if the Colombian got into the top three of the Ballon d’Or. Which did not happen.
Deterrent clauses
There are other types of dissuasive clauses, in this case aimed at footballers. The most famous is the one that was included in the contract signed by Luis Figo’s lawyer, Jose Veiga, and the still candidate Florentino Pérez, closing the signing of the Portuguese if he won the elections. In the contract there was a clause that the Portuguese and his lawyer overlooked, whereby if Pérez won the elections and Figo refused to go to Madrid, the player would pay 30 million to the white club. When Florentino won, the player refused to go in the first instance, but that clause sealed his fate.
2023-06-29 06:37:47
#variables #transfer #contracts #cheating #financial #engineering
