WHILE LIVERPOOL FANS cross fingers and toes in hope that the club – and more specifically, its owners – see off Barcelona’s advances for Philippe Coutinho, a football fanbase 6,000 miles away will do so pleading for the opposite outcome.
Rio de Janeiro club Vasco da Gama stand to earn relatively major money should their former player join the Spanish giants. As per Fifa’s ‘solidarity mechanism’, were the 25-year-old attacker to join a club outside of England before the expiry of his Liverpool contract, Vasco would be entitled to 2.5% of the fee.
Article 21 of the world governing body’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players states:
If a professional is transferred before the expiry of his contract, any club that has contributed to his education and training shall receive a proportion of the compensation paid to his former club (solidarity
contribution).
In Coutinho’s case, the Brasileiro club would likely be entitled to all of this compensation having trained him since early childhood; Coutinho trained at a local academy before being taken on trial and subsequently being signed by Vasco in 1999, aged seven.
Fifa’s initiative dictates that clubs at which a player plies his trade until the age of 23 are considered ‘trainers’. When the player moves on, they can receive up to 5% of the value of any subsequent ‘international’ transfer, i.e. if the player signs for a a club in a different country.
From 12 to 15 years, the ‘trainer club’ earns 0.25% – per season spent at the club – of a subsequent international transfer fee. From 16 to 23 years, they earn 0.5% per season.
Coutinho left the club at 18, meaning Vasco are set to earn 2.5% of any potential fee (0.25% x four; 0.5% x three) which would see Coutinho join Barcelona or any other club outside of England.
Barcelona’s recent bid, which was rejected by Liverpool, is believed to have amounted to €100m, which would have seen Vasco da Gama pocket €2.5m for their troubles. The likelihood now is that the sum they receive will be significantly higher if Barca are to prize their former pupil away from Anfield.
Incidentally, the Brazilian Serie A club sold Coutinho to Inter Milan in Italy’s equivalent for a sum total of €3.5m in 2008 – a fee which could be matched or bettered a full nine years on if Coutinho was to join the Catalan giants for anything north of €140m.
To put any such sum into context, it’s worth noting that Vasco have made three permanent signings this summer, all for no fee. Aside from the €11.8m sale of midfielder Douglas Luiz to Manchester City, they have earned just shy of €300,000 from the permanent departures of four players.
Per Globo, the club forecast that they would receive R $13m (€3.4m) from the Fifa solidarity mechanism when setting their budget at the start of 2017, though it’s unclear as to whether this incorporated the potential sale of Coutinho or his fellow academy products, or both.
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