Reports: Chelsea FC’s Diego Costa Signing Complicated By 3rd-Party Ownership

Reports are coming out that the reason Chelsea FC met Atletico Madrid ‘s release clause for Diego Costa is because third-party ownership complicated the deal. The reports claim that out of the £32 million that Chelsea paid, the Spanish club only received about half of that sum. The other half was supposedly split between Diego Costa’s old club Sporting Braga who was allegedly entitled to 20 percent of any sell-on fee that Atletico Madrid received.

Sporting Braga initially held a a 50 percent stake in the player as part of the initial sale but they sold 30 percent of that for an undisclosed fee according to Wikipedia. Atletico also paid nearly a million Euros in agent fees to a company called Gestifute that provides agent services to young footballers. An investment fund by the name of Quality was also supposedly entitled to another 20 percent.

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That leaves us with 40 percent of the transfer fee already accounted for before the club sees any of the transfer money. To rub some salt in the wound for Atletico, agent Jorge Mendes took another 10 percent off the top in agent fees and bonuses. So for a player valued at £32 million, Atletico Madrid received the paltry sum of £16 million. While it is not a bad return on investment for a player they bought for less than £1.5 million, it is still not quite the sum they were hoping for after developing yet another world class center forward.

These are the kind of details that many football fans do not think about when discussing transfer dealings. They see a number that the player is sold for and assume that one club handed over a check for that amount to another club. The fine print about agent fees, sell on fees, taxes, third party ownership fees, and wages are rarely discussed. This deal for Diego Costa seemed more complex than most but if he is banging in goals for the Blues then it will end up being some very smart business.

Source: The Express

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