Virgil van Dijk

The main advantage of Portuguese clubs is that they allow "part ownership" or whatever its called in Portugal which they also allow in South America, meaning the likes of James Rodriguez, Hulk, Falcao and whoever basically join them on kind of cheap deals which really just advertise the players in Europe so they can then be sold on for big money, Porto don't actually make a lot of money from it or Benfica and teams like that as they usually only own small %'s of the player, and companies or people in South America own the rest of the player, usually always the majority.

Like when West Ham got fined for having Tevez and Mascherano it's because they only part owned them and you're not allowed to do that in the UK or most countries in Europe.

 

Porto are actually over £120million in debt and regularly make losses, which would show that they don't actually make a lot of money off some of their deals which look good on paper given that they are usually in the Champions League every year as well.

So the "Porto model" is a bit of a myth. They might use James Rodriguez for 2/3 seasons and might have only paid £4million to get him but hard to know how much of him they actually owned, seems they only owned 25% so when he was sold for £33million then they would only have got like £8.5million. Even though to the average fan it looks like they bought him for £4million and got £33million when he was sold. Theyd have been better buying him outright to begin with for £15million or so and then they'd have made double the money they did although they probably cant afford the risk, so they benefit massively from the part ownership.

If UEFA banned part ownership, which there's been talk of Porto and Benfica and that may be * because they've been used to getting some of the best South American players for basically free to advertise them in Europe so they can be punted on. If UEFA ban it then they'd need to buy the players out right which they probably couldnt afford.

 

McGeady will be the last. We may see good money for Hendo but far too early to speculate.

The likes of Armstrong and Griffiths, as good as they are. Will stay with us as there will be no EPL interest.

 

Armstrong and Griffiths are better than a lot of players who are in the Premier League right now, and both have the scope to improve (more so with Armstrong). Its impossible to say that McGeady will be the last.

 

McGeady was light years ahead of anything Scottish we've had in our ranks since. Not slating what we have but it is so rare for a Scottish player to have that level of ability.

 

Interesting post.

I wonder why these part ownership deals are allowed in Portugal and Italy but not in other countries?

 

I think those countries, also Spain their FA's must think it benefits their teams.

But in most countries we see it as money going out of the game to businesses/"gangsters" making money out young players. Like a young Brazilian good player, a guy or company would go to him with £100k when he's 15 and buy his family a house in a nice area, a car and whatever get him sorted out in return for him giving them the rights to him as a player and then they use clubs to get him exposure to sell and make money off him, so that when he eventually ends up at Porto then is sold to Atletico Madrid they rake in the majority of the money which is disappearing out of football.

FIFA wanted to ban it before as I imagine Brazilian fans must be raging that rich people own most of the good players in their League so their clubs are never getting the right money for players. Spain and Portugal were the two FA's who opposed it the most.

 

Yeah that's not a good situation. You'd think FIFA would be able to do something about that, if they had the will to.

 

True. I guess I was really talking more about third party ownership. Although it is also weird how in Italy you have so many players who are part owned by more than one club. That doesn't seem to be commonplace anywhere else. Not that I know of anyway.

 

All the best in the EPL

 

Shame to see him leave on a low. But all the best Virgil.

 

Bye bye Virgil

Will be sold in the coming days to make up for lost revenue from CL.

The mood I'm in tonight, I don't even give a *.

 

He was being sold in the coming days if we won or not.

 

Good riddance, the most overrated player I've seen on here. And think some don't appreciate Sammy's performances in Europe yet love this guy who's constantly costing us.

 

too good for the spl, not good enough for the champions league.

a middle of the road epl team with no chance of winning * all and not much pressure to do so is his level.

Bye.

 

I hope southampton are still willing to give us 10 million for him

 

Can't blame the guy for wanting to go either. The board show * all ambition and he's playing with other guys at the back who are absolute dug *.

 

Wait he done a back heal against Partick Thistle and now your telling me he isn't worth 25 sqwuabillion cheese noodles?