Leeds Utd owner tells how to beat transfer rules
‘Because you are financing the club with £12 million ... you got 20 per cent of the sell-on of the players’
A CHAMPIONSHIP club owner offered a fictitious investment firm a way around FA and Fifa rules on transfers, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Massimo Cellino, the owner of Leeds United, was filmed suggesting the firm should become a shareholder in his club, in return for which it would receive a portion of his players’ sell-on fees.
The disclosure comes after Sam Allardyce lost his job as England manager after suggesting a separate way around the same rules, also in meetings with undercover reporters.
FA and Fifa rules ban third-party companies from acquiring the economic rights to players, or having a right to a portion of the fees when they are sold on by clubs. The practice has been banned in England for eight years after the Premier League compared it to “indentured slavery”.
However, in a meeting at Leeds United’s ground arranged by Pino Pagliara, a football agent, Mr Cellino proposed a way that the fund could effectively finance the purchase of players and then profit from their sale.
Mr Cellino explained that due to the rules he could not simply “give an outside firm a percentage of the sale of the player”. But he proposed the firm bought shares amounting to 20 per cent of the club, in return for which it would receive a 20 per cent cut of future sell-on fees.
The Italian said: “You’ve got something, a logic to become partners... Because you are financing the club with £12 million and you got 20 per cent of the sell-on of the players.”
Mr Cellino, 60, is the subject of an FA inquiry into allegations that he agreed an illegal payment of £185,000 during a transfer, which he denies, and that he broke third-party ownership rules.
Last night the club denied that the filmed proposal amounted to circumventing the rules.
HE is nicknamed Il mangia-allenatori – the manager eater – having sacked 43 coaches in his 24 years in football.
And when Massimo Cellino, the Italian owner of Leeds United, held a meeting with undercover Telegraph reporters, his behaviour was every bit as unpredictable as his reputation suggests. “Don’t f--- with me. I’m Italian, not English!” he exclaimed at one point, after producing a bottle of whisky to drink with his guests and puffing on cigarette after cigarette.
The interjection was typical of the combative manner with which Cellino addressed his visitors, constantly firing off questions and seeming to punctuate his speech with more expletives than pauses. He used the F-word more than 50 times during the two-hour meeting, in which he described football as a “f---ing dirty, dirty business”.
The reporters, posing as representatives of a Far East investment firm, suggested the part-financing of players to Cellino. They and he knew that such an arrangement would be a clear breach of Fifa and FA rules, and the owner made his concerns clear.
In broken English, he launched into an excited explanation of why the proposal was so attractive but how it was important to “minimise the risk”.
“Technically, it’s perfect, for me it’s beautiful,” he said. “For me it’s the best thing. But you know that by the rules here, and everywhere now, it’s become every day more difficult…
“I cannot allow myself to make a mistake in England. I don’t want to be the one that breach the rules.”
He explained a less direct way in which the Far East company could fund player ownership.
It could become a shareholder in the club and then receive its “profit” from sell-on fees – thus getting round rules on third-party ownership. He suggested that if the firm took a 20 per cent shareholding in Leeds, it could be paid a percentage of the profits from player transfers. Shareholders normally receive only a dividend based on the company’s net profit. “I’m giving you the recipe to do a job that cover you, and doesn’t make you exposed to any risk with the Football League, with anyone,” he advised.
He berated an undercover reporter who appeared not to share his excitement in the scheme, saying: “You know something? You know what’s the problem now? Lacking of the business. It was too good. That’s why you are like that… Why is too good for you?... What’s the trick?”
The meeting in Cellino’s office at the Leeds ground had been arranged by Pino Pagliara, a friend of Cellino who thought he was going to be hired as a consultant by the Far East firm.
Mr Pagliara, normally an unshakeably confident operator, appeared hesitant in Cellino’s presence, deferentially referring to him as “Presidente”.
It was an insight into the type of conversation successive Leeds managers – seven so far since he took over in 2014 – may have faced. He complained about the greed of players in English leagues and their demands for add-ons to their generous wages.
“Signing-on fee, appearance fee, loyalty bonus, relocation,” he said. “Out! In England, that’s the worst culture in the world, this group. They are specialised in screwing people.”
Cellino told the undercover reporter that the Far East firm could gain a 20 per cent cut of sell-on fees of up to £50 million per player if Leeds could make it back to the Premier League.
Days later it emerged that Cellino had bought the remaining 20 per cent of the club from an investment fund, giving him 100 per cent ownership.
Cellino is awaiting a decision later this month from an FA tribunal over an alleged illegal payment of £185,000 relating to a 2014 transfer, but it seems unlikely that the outcome of the case will shake his confidence.
After a two-week stint in a remand cell after he was arrested in 2013 in Italy, he grinned as he told reporters: “It’s pretty good in there. Anyway, sooner or later you’ll all end up in prison.”
Following the publication of footage of Mr Cellino on the Telegraph website last night the club issued a statement denying he had offered to circumvent the rules. Instead he “made a perfectly proper suggestion which is entirely consistent with the FA’s regulations”, the statement said.