Buy back clauses

[Sorry Roger]

I understand the concept of a buyback clause: club A have a promising talent who for whatever reason doesn’t fit their current needs. So they sell him to club B for, say, £10 million with an obligation that club B must sell him back to them in two year’s time at a pre agreed price of, say, £30 million should club A trigger the clause.

So what happens if club B then sell him to club C during those two years for a higher price?

Obviously I am thinking of our friends up the road who have sold Lavia to Chelsea for a reported £53 million whilst Man City are supposed to have a buy back clause of £40 million next year. I presume that Man City benefit from an enhanced sell on fee in lieu of forfeiting their buy back rights but that is just supposition.

Has anyone come across an article or interview explaining how these things work?

 

[kirsikka]

In your case, then he's club C's player and that's it.

Chelsea had a buyback on Ake but chose not to activate it, he went to Man City and from that moment, Chelsea no longer had any claim on him.

With Lavia, once he's signed for Chelsea, any buyback Man City had will expire.

It's funny you should mention it as, with so many clauses now a part of any transfer deal, I start to wonder when a club with use their 'network' to negate them.

ie We buy a player for a low fee but with significant addons based on appearances or performance. After one season, before they are triggered, we sell him to Lorient so all those clauses no longer apply, and then loan him back.

It'd be unethical but it the world of hundreds of millions floating around with clubs now run by ruthless businessmen, I'm sure someone will do it at some point.

 

[kirsikka]

I did see this, which was written by a sports lawyer so he should know all about the detail in some of these clauses:

Football Transfers: Buy-Back Clauses Explained — DANIEL GEEY

Every so often, I receive an excellent question (or set of questions) from readers of the blog. Recently, I received some really insightful queries from Jason Ives in relation to specific transfer agreement clauses. I set out his questions and provide some detail on how such clause

www.danielgeey.com

He claims sometimes the selling club might need to pay a cancellation fee to negate the buyback clause if they want to sell the player to someone else, but it depends on the detail in that particular contract. That's quite an interesting snippet I don't think I've heard before.