From now on, I shall always refer to a million as a "Lambert". Manchester United signed Robin Van Persie for 24 Lamberts. Samuel Eto'o earns a quarter of a Lambert per week. Hitler killed 6 Lambert Jews.
Ha. Oh well I will just even it up by butchering one of your topics in the future. It's that Kia bloody Joorabchian, he was one of Mark Hughes's hangers on (yes, managers have agents now). You can bet that Julio Cesar, Granero, Bosingwa etc all were his doing. No, I can't see Nicola doing too many deals with him.
The figures don't include the £4.5m we had to pay to Gaston Ramirez's original club, Penarol. I am led to believe that they then paid a fair chunk of that back to Ramirez's agent. So, add on a couple of million and we are nearer the real number saints have "paid" to agents.
I don't think that's how it would have worked. Bologna owed the sell-on fee to Penarol, and they wanted to negotiate our original offer to cover it, which is why there was a delay before Gaston signed. We made the entire payment to Bologna, and they then transferred a percentage of that to Penarol. This would have been an agreement that was created as a term in the contract when Bologna bought Gaston from Penarol. I see no reason why we would have been in contact with Penarol. That was Bologna's business.
I was under the impression that it was an agreed upon sell-on fee, i.e. Bologna pay Penarol 30% of Ramirez's next transfer fee. South American clubs often like to make use of such clauses when they sell their young stars, because they don't really have the bargaining power to command large transfer fees. Bologna paid them 2.5m Euros when they bought him in 2010, and obviously included that clause as well. I remember an Italian website reported at one point that Bologna were haggling for more money from Saints so that they could pay the fee. Obviously it might not have been a reliable source, but I can't see any logical situation whereby Penarol would literally have owned 30% of the player. Co-ownership in football, as far as I understand it, has to be 50/50.
There is zero chance of a £15m transfer having almost no agent fee. Believe you me, Ramirez's agent got paid handsomely, just maybe not directly from Saints coffers.
Actually I seem to remember reading he waived his fee to push the deal over the line! This probably goes some way to explaining why our numbers are so low.
Even if that's true, that doesn't mean each party values their half the same. Clearly Bologna wanted more for their share than Peñarol, if indeed they did each own a part.
What's a few hundred thousand pounds to a man who runs his own international escort trafficking ring*? *According to one article out of Uruguay which seems to have amounted to absolutely nothing legitimate.
