The day football lost its marbles!
As Brazilian superstar (who’s not even the best player in the world) is set to be sold for £196MILLION, it’s ...
EVEN in the mad world of football transfers, it is a staggering amount of money.
But the crazy spending by super-rich clubs reached new levels yesterday, with Brazilian forward Neymar agreeing to join French side Paris SaintGermain (PSG) for an astonishing £196million.
It will be the biggest transfer in football history and more than double the game’s previous record of £89.3million set just last year.
The 25-year-old Barcelona player will also be paid £595,000 a week, it was reported. This means PSG will have to fork out £31million a year in wages, taking the total cost of the deal to more than £350million over five years.
With bonuses also included if he plays well, it could reach more than £450million.
But money is no issue for the French side, which is one of the world’s richest clubs following their takeover by Qatar Sports Investments (QSi), an arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund with access to £194billion.
QSi will be hoping its new star signing will bring them closer to their goal of winning Europe’s biggest football competition – the Champions League – something which has so far eluded them.
Qatar, a microstate with a population of just 2.57million, already has its own Masters golf tournament, sponsors the ‘Qatar’ Goodwood Festival, and is controversially set to host 2022 World Cup, a deal which has been surrounded by allegations of bribery and corruption.
The country is currently locked in a bitter diplomatic dispute with its neighbours who have accused its government of supporting terrorism. But the signing of Neymar signals it is businesses as usual for the tiny oil-rich state.
The £196million transfer fee smashes the previous record, set by Manchester United last year when the club signed Frenchman Paul Pogba. Bizarrely, Neymar is not even considered to be the best player in the world – lagging behind Argentinian Lionel Messi and Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo, who both also play in the Spanish league – La Liga.
Away from football, Neymar has more than 30million followers on Twitter and 78million on Instagram.
He endorses more than a dozen products, including a bank, a car manufacturer and perfume and also has his own trainer collaboration with Nike and basketball great Michael Jordan, the ‘Air Jordan v Neymar’.
An avid collector of sports shoes, he was once said to have spent more than £14,000 on them in one shopping trip.
This year he was placed third on Forbes magazine’s list of the highest-paid footballers behind Ronaldo and Messi.
Born in Mogi das Cruzes, a small city east of Sao Paulo, Neymar da Silva Santos Junior is the only son of former professional footballer Neymar Santos and wife Nadine.
The family are close and his father has guided his son’s career and continues to work as his agent. He is phenomenally popular in Brazil. When he was left out of the squad for the 2010 World Cup finals, 14,000 fans signed a petition in a bid to get him included.
He was 19 when his ex-girlfriend Carol Dantas gave birth to his son, David Lucca, and they both moved to Barcelona when Neymar signed for the team in 2013.
Since then he has dated Brazilian actress and model Bruna Marquezine, 21.
On the pitch, during his three seasons in Catalonia, Neymar has helped Barcelona win the Spanish league twice, the Champions League once, the Spanish cup on three occasions and the FIFA Club World Cup.
In October, he signed a new contract with Barcelona which would have lasted until 2021, with the buy-out clause raised.
Club president Josep Bartomeu
‘Must be paid in full’
had said that the club would do everything to keep him, but to no avail. Neymar reportedly met with PSG chairman Nasser AlKhelaifi in Qatar on Tuesday before making a brief visit to Barcelona’s training ground yesterday to inform the club of his wish to leave.
Afterwards, the Spanish club’s spokesman Josep Vives said the player had been reminded of ‘the release clause in his current contract, which as of July 1 is 222 million euros [£196million], which must be paid in full’. But it was a price PSG was willing to pay, according to one of Neymar’s representatives Wagner Ribeiro.
‘After Neymar gave me the green light on August 1, I went to Paris and today I brought back PSG’s offer to pay the (buyout) clause, which will be done in the next hours,’ he said yesterday, adding his client would be with the French team by this weekend. News of the record signing was met with disbelief – and some anger – on social media.
One Twitter user commented that based on the UK’s average salary of around £27,000, it would take someone about 22 years to earn what Neymar is expected to be paid in a week.
The unprecedented scale of the deal also sparked rumours that Barcelona could make a complaint to European footballing organisation UEFA over a failure to adhere to Financial Fair Play rules. Introduced seven years ago, the rules are designed to stop clubs from spending more than they earn.