This bit…
It’s not offering him a contract that enables a quick exit. It’s offering him a contract that means LFC get something instead of nothing at the point he wants to leave. I.e. Summer of 2024 TAA says he wants to join RM in Summer of 2025. If he doesn’t sign a new contract then he leaves for free when he wants to join them. If he signs a 2 year extension then come summer of 2025 RM have to pay a fee and LFC don’t stand in his way.
I used “quick exit” as shorthand for what you’re describing.
It goes back to the point that there is quite possibly no fee we would let him go for that Real Madrid would pay.
Zidane (Juve → Real)
Hasn’t he fucking gone yet?
Ok I get you now. It depends. Any fee LFC could have got would not be RM simply paying that much extra. It’d at least partly be money TAA and agent would be giving up in signing on fee or wages.
There is still quite a cost to RM signing TAA on a “free”. Currently that is all going to TAA and his agents.
Which would also weaken the case for him to move, which is why they wouldn’t do it, no?
That’s a good shout, but I realised what it has in common with Figo is the Galáticos era.
It’s not weakening the case for him to move, it’s a choice he’s made. He’s moved in the way that is most financially beneficial to himself and RM, and that’s his choice. That’s a significant part in the reaction he’s had. If he doesn’t want that reaction then this was an option for managing it better. His reaction suggests he thought, or was told by others also benefiting from the move, that the fan reaction would be different
Look, all that debate is also conditioned on the assumption that he was sure he was going to move, and has been sure for the past year.
Sorry if it’s been mentioned as I’ve not read any further down the page than this.
I think a significant one is Suarez.
We all know about the Arsenal bid and that Suarez wanted to talk to them. Suarez himself said that he talked to Stevie G who told him that he should stay and if he played to the best of his ability he’d have much better clubs than Arsenal interested in him.
If I remember correctly after the following season was underway Suarez actually signed a new contract which (and I could be wrong but am pretty sure it went this way) he was going to get a large pay rise in the following summer.
As soon as the details of that new contract came out I think most of us knew for certain that he was leaving. Putting in the clause about the massive jump in pay (I think it would have been something like £200k per week) really did nothing for the Club but put Suarez into a much better position when negotiating wages at his next club.
What the new contract did for the Club was to ensure that we were able to negotiate a better deal than we would have.
So in the end (imo) the contract signing was something of a collective effort to ensure that all parties got more money - except for Barcelona who probably had to pay a bit more in both transfer fee and wages.
If TAA’s decision caused an upset to some fans, Suarez would be unforgivable then. Through all his bitegate and racist-gate, we have given him our full support only for him to threaten to consider court action for not accepting Arsenal’s bid, and then agreed to sign a new contract saying all sorts of nice things about feeling the connection with the city and the fans and wanting and believing we can win big things and then got banned for 4 months and we supported him only for him to jump ship to Barca just 6 months after he signed that new contract because of all the connections he felt with us.
For whatever TAA has done and maybe upsetting, Suarez is a bigger rat than TAA could be.
It’d be interesting to see on which side of the picket lines some LFC fans might fall in 2025.
So why would any top player want to play for a club who only rates you because you are free, it doesn’t show any belief in the player.
Madrid got Mbappe on a free transfer. They don’t rate him either?
Because if they don’t need to pay a transfer fee they can give the player a big signing on fee and a bigger wage. We are willing to give you all this cash, rather than we are willing to give your club all this cash, is showing faith enough.
They were going to happy to pay a huge fee the season earlier but supposedly outside influences, the French president got involved?
The signing on fee would be significantly less than any transfer fee!!!
Absolutely, but it’s the pocket it goes into that’s more important.
Do we actually have any hard information either way rather than just speculation and/or hearsay?
