Club A makes a bid of £50m so club B just have to accept it, right? Not quite. As Tottenham Hotspur and Morgan Gibbs-White are finding out, sometimes the devil is in the detail.
Liam Delap chose Chelsea over other interested parties (Photo: Getty)
Already this summer, Liam Delap and Dean Huijsen had their pick of clubs because of “brilliantly negotiated” release clauses. They are a blueprint that agents are expected to follow.
Indeed, specialist lawyers are now being drafted in to avoid the sort of controversy and delays that have hampered the Gibbs-White deal.
When a young player starts to produce eye-catching displays, their club will often reward them with a new deal that includes an astronomical release clause that is totally unrealistic.
In England it is more about ensuring players – in the word of one director of football – don’t become “imprisoned” by their club.
“If you have a player who is a big asset but doesn’t have a release clause, the way football contracts work is they are fixed-term contracts, so if a rival club wants to buy them out of that it’s up to the selling club to decide whether they want to.
“The release clause balances the power between player and club. It allows them, at an advanced point, to discuss a future exit on terms everyone will be happy with.
“So it’s become more important for players and agents to have pre-defined exit routes and that’s what release clauses do for them.”
Dean Huijsen joined Real Madrid from Bournemouth for £50m (Photo: Getty)Huijsen signed for Bournemouth partly because a very reasonable release clause – £50m exclusive of solidarity payments, paid over three instalments across 18 months – was inserted into his deal.
And then there’s the unspoken way clubs benefit – “grey areas”. That’s when a release clause is inserted in a contract without getting into the specifics.
They can demand the fee up front, for example, which renders the whole thing pointless as few clubs could afford that from a PSR perspective.
“That’s less common now that English football is waking up to the importance of clauses, but it does still happen.”
How are release clauses structured?
Firstly you need to “nail” the payment structure. So is that fee paid over two years, three years or five years?
Secondly, you need to tackle confidentiality. Because Premier League contracts are confidential, so is the release clause in it.
If that isn’t in place, things can get messy, with potentially the agent, player and buying club all in breach of the contract.
Thirdly, timing is key. It is almost never the case that the clauses are open-ended. Most have a deadline – mid-July is a common one – and that is because it gives selling clubs certainty over whether they have to replace a player.
Ipswich Town winger Omari Hutchinson’s release clause has expired (Photo: Getty)Bespoke clauses also exist, eliminating certain clubs that aren’t allowed to trigger it to prevent players moving between rivals for Champions League places, for example. Naming specific rivals that aren’t allowed to trigger it is fine.
So a buying club effectively needs to give the player the money to do it, creating a layer of bureaucracy that works in the overseas club’s favour.
“If you have an agent who doesn’t understand the legal specifics and financial rules around football, you can end up with a release clause which, on the face of it, is useful for your player, but if the terms of that release clause are unworkable for a club, it’s essentially worthless,” Keane says.
“The specific terms of the release clause are what makes it a useful mechanism. You have the top-line figure, which is important, the payment terms, the timing and the confidentiality.
Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis is threatening to pull the plug on the deal (Photo: Getty)
Nottingham Forest have accused Tottenham of tapping up Gibbs-White before the £60m clause was triggered, delaying the deal while they appeal to the Premier League to investigate.
“It’s a huge waste of time if you trigger it and the player isn’t bothered,” says one source.
“Without knowing the ins and outs, it looks as if it’s an attempt by Forest to get more money out of the deal,” they surmised.
Could it become part of the Alexander Isak conversation soon?
This summer, with three years left on his deal, Newcastle United hold all the cards. Whether Isak is keen on moving or not, they have been able to repel Liverpool’s interest even as the Reds propose a British-record fee.
One source believes a release clause that “suits both parties” is almost inevitable.
“They did it with Bruno Guimaraes, so I think they’d do it with Isak. Without it, there’s no motivation for him to sign anything,” the executive says.
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While a release clause would make Isak’s departure virtually inevitable next summer, it also gives Newcastle much-needed certainty over how much they’ll be banking. In the PSR era, that’s vital.
A word of warning, though. Newcastle put a £100m release clause in Guimaraes’s five-year deal more than a year ago thinking it would solve their PSR worries in a stroke. When they surprisingly had no takers, it left them scrambling for a solution.
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