Times article
Manchester City are paying an astonishing £47 million fee to Carlos Tévez’s private “owners” in a move that obliterates the British transfer record. The deal makes the Argentina striker the fifth most expensive footballer of all time.
City’s billionaire Arab owners have agreed to pay almost twice the £25.5 million fee widely reported to have changed hands, The Times can reveal. An initial £15 million payment is to be followed by two additional sums of £16 million.
Another £3.5 million will be paid if City win the Champions League while Tévez is at the club — an improbable scenario, but Sheikh Mansour has already shown the lengths to which he is prepared to go to transform the club from perennial underachievers into contenders for the biggest prizes.
One of the Sheikh’s first moves when he took over 12 months ago was to smash the British transfer record by paying Real Madrid £34.2 million for Robinho, the Brazil forward.
But that fee is dwarfed by the £47 million deal for Tévez, which ranks behind only the signings of Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Kaká, and Zinédine Zidane, for £80 million, £60.7 million, £56.1 million and £47.2 million respectively, as the most expensive.
The revelation is the latest twist in the extraordinary saga surrounding Tévez, whose name has rarely been out of the headlines since he arrived at West Ham United in August 2006 and sparked huge controversy about third-party ownership.
And it deepens the mystery about where the money is going.
The Times understands that it is paid to two offshore companies but Kia Joorabchian, the businessman who fronts the consortium that owned the rights to Tévez until City bought the player outright in July, has never explained who the beneficiaries are.
Nonetheless, Tévez has represented a handsome bit of business. The investors stand to make an estimated profit of at least £46.5 million from an assortment of fees received for a player whose “economic rights” they originally bought from Boca Juniors for £14 million in 2005.
They are understood to include a fee of £4.5 million from West Ham, where Tévez spent the 2006-07 season, a £9 million payment from Manchester United to cover the cost of the player’s two-year “loan” at Old Trafford and now the sum from City.
City’s outlay does not end there, though. On top of the £47 million fee, the club are paying Tévez a salary of £7.5 million a year, or just under £145,000 a week. His wages over a five-year contract take City’s total projected outlay on the striker to £84.5 million, a staggering sum even by City’s inflated standards.
In all, City’s billionaire owner has committed £770.986 million, which includes the £200 million it cost to buy the club, the £342.786 million committed on players’ contracts and £10 million spent on improving the Carrington training headquarters, City of Manchester Stadium and the club’s academy. Mark Hughes, the City manager, has spent £140 million on six leading players this summer and £218.2 million in transfer fees in total since Sheikh Mansour’s takeover, during which time City’s annual wage bill has more than doubled to just under £95 million.
Hughes has repeatedly insisted that City will walk away from deals they deem to be too expensive, but the figures involved for Tévez will doubtless lead some to question whether that is the case — and, moreover, whether the player is worth it. It is the inevitable reality of City’s position that they will face a premium on players but the sums paid for Tévez seem all the more mind-boggling given how reluctant United were to meet the £25.5 million asking price originally agreed with Joorabchian on top of the £9 million already paid.
Although the Barclays Premier League champions eventually agreed to do the deal, David Gill, the United chief executive, relented only after Ronaldo had been sold to Real Madrid. In the end, Tévez turned down their offer to stay at Old Trafford and joined City instead.
What Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, makes of the true figure paid for Tévez remains to be seen, given that he made a point of saying during the summer that the Argentinian was overpriced.
“In my opinion, I don’t think he was worth £25 million,” Ferguson has said. “He was popular with the supporters. The fans rightly have their heroes and I was happy to go along with the deal as it was the right one but, quite simply, he is not worth £25 million.”
City, of course, will not view it that way, even if the move is, in part, a reflection of their eagerness to land big-name signings in the wake of the failed pursuits of Kaká, Samuel Eto’o and John Terry. Joorabchian may also have argued that the fee agreed with United two years ago was no longer a fair valuation of a player who has subsequently won consecutive league championships and lifted the European Cup.
The problem for City is whether they have created a rod for their own back by paying such a sum for Tévez, who must now carry the tag of being the most expensive player in the Premier League as well as one of the highest paid.
The money may represent small change for the royal family of Abu Dhabi but £47 million on Tévez will still cause gasps among City’s fans.
Inflationary moves
£47m
The fee Manchester City are paying for Carlos Tévez, an English record
£34.2m
The previous English record, paid by City to Real Madrid for Robinho
£80m
The world-record fee for Cristiano Ronaldo, when he moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic went from Inter Milan to Barcelona for a package worth £60.7 million. Tévez’s transfer is the fifth highest globally with Kaká and Zinédine Zidane costing more
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